


Interstellar Lullabies

by Plinkoid_Fics (daveaj)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 07:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 31,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3282398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daveaj/pseuds/Plinkoid_Fics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To put it shortly; a voice is but a play on airflow.</p><p>As Heir of Breath it would be expected for you to have a certain affinity with such things.<br/>As John Egbert, it was not expected (or welcomed) for you to be turned on by Dave Strider's voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a repost with permission. It was originally by former Tumblr/AO3 user Plinkoid. For more information on the author, go [here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Daveaj/profile). The rating and tags may not be entirely accurate to what they were before, but I tried to account for any triggers I could find. If anyone leaves comments I will make sure the author sees them. Any notes after this point are the author's original notes.

There are Glow-in-the-Dark Stars on your bedroom’s ceiling. 

They have been present for as long as you can remember. You can’t imagine ever taking them down. They are stars after all, they aren't of a nature of things you can simply pick up.

A night spent at home in which you can’t wake up to a sky of soft lights does not exist in your memory. You don’t know when your father had put them up, or from where he had purchased them, but then again you don’t even know if it had been his idea. There are a lot of things you ignore about him, yet, this is not something you preoccupy yourself with.

You don’t know for sure if you indeed were an imaginative child, but when you look up to those small plastic stars, the thoughts you had pieced together at a younger age spiral down towards your current being.

Maybe it had been your father’s initiative, but you are also familiar with the various studies speaking of a child’s mind’s development if exposed to classical music at the youngest of ages. But to you, listening to piano concertos as you fall asleep had always been the natural thing to partake in.  
The air of your bedroom bled with chords and overtones and the overbearing melody of the darkness that simply could not be under the scrutiny of the measly Glow-in-the-Dark Stars.

More than that, the music stretched a whole universe before your drooping eyes. The simplest notes became planets, the harmony became but nebula, the adagios became northern lights, the staccato lit up the sky with asteroids, the crescendo revealed constellations…

It’s interesting to note that you never had been particularly taken with space back in the day. However, the music for which you seemed to hold such great love took up the task of uncovering the skies for you. Regardless of the composer’s intents, the musings of a piano always were a spatial lullaby in your heart.

At some point, you had been supposed to outgrow it, as a child could one day rest his eyes without a loving parent’s voice soothing away anguishes with tales and legends, you should have moved from this soft spot you held for the late night’s embrace of classical music. You didn't, not quite. You stopped turning on the old fashioned CD player, you even handed it back to your father.

But you would hum softly at the sight of your ceiling and the piano never ceased its humming either. The notes gathered in complex manners in your mind and never were you to face the night without a soft song to accompany you.

When all was said and done and you took up the task that was Sburb and _returned_ , the bubbling piano compositions did not only dim and hush but came to a stop all together. Out of all repercussions and lasting damages the game could have caused, the silence shook you.

The silence sounded like the screams of those you came to be close to, buzzed like the electronics you had carried around and their warning of a friend’s pestering, sang the way flames did on a body of water, recoiled like the many explosions you had had to face, stung like the cease of breath of those you loved, terrified you as the smash of your hammer did; _the silence sounded like the game_.

And though while you were in the heat of it you, and most of your friends too, had thought you were suddenly outgrowing a lot of things. Once you had been out, you had wasted no time to revert to old habits, to wrap yourself up in already finished illusions, to rebuild your concept of home. Going to bed meant fetching your music player and earphones and selecting the colossal piano playlist and of course looking up to the fake stars.

But things had changed of course.  
The diminuendo cleared things up and brought forth the zodiac, the fortissimo wrecked the universe and revealed the stars who had in fact already passed, the leading tones tore moons away from their lighthouse, the sonatas told stories of loss and deceit…

Your concept of space had changed and your past love for the piano’s singing had revealed the destructive quality of your new state of mind. That wasn’t the worst of it.  
It was the heartache, the longing, the overbearing sorrow for the things you had gambled and the things you had irrevocably lost. In the night, you could easily forget all of what you had gained. When you did not need to find ways to lull yourself to sleep, you were perfectly content with your adventures and their outcome. In your bed, under the fake, cheap stars, the trills of the piano assaulted you with images of the ones you missed and the errors you had committed.

All things considered, it wasn't too much to handle, and in fact you were a bit shocked this was the only price you had to pay for the whole thing you had had to go through. You could even say it was welcomed. You were empowered by the notion that you were only weakened once completely by yourself, in the dark. The tears you had to shed were shed in pride and you were absolutely thankful for this. Eventually, however, you grew tired of it and decided you had had thoroughly enough with the vanquished melancholy.  
You couldn't fall asleep under the blanket of silence, but neither could you fall asleep accompanied by the lullabies of your past.

There was a short relapse of insomniac episodes after the realization. The game had involved a lot of those. Actually, the game had had an iron grip on your sleeping pattern and biological clock. Sleep was no longer a given, it was a piece on the chessboard. Withholding from sleep was marvelously easy, especially considering the fact that your chums seemed all too willing to stay up with you. They were faring fairly enough as well, and you were somewhat relieved. However, you did not want to be the first one to crash and burn.

Jade had initially been your go to person. Who could have blamed you? Her typical answers appeared to you stereotypically. You deemed that she could fix just about anything with healthy amounts of fruits and sunshine, or whatever else she enjoyed. Speaking to her about your problems evoked the image of her clapping her hands cheerfully as you overcome the wildest of monsters. It hadn't quite turned out that way, not exactly…

 

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 23:14 –-

EB: hi jade!  
GG: uuuuhm shouldnt you be in bed mister?? >:)  
EB: that's actually sort of,  
EB: what i want to talk about.  
GG: uuuuuh :?  
EB: uh…  
GG: uuuuh  
EB: uuuuh!!  
EB: so how do you feel about the dark?  
GG: it isnt even really dark over here yet silly :/  
EB: i know!  
EB: i just have a really hard time not thinking about it when it’s dark.  
EB you know.  
EB: about the game…  
GG: shocking :/  
EB: ooooh what enthusiasm.  
EB: rose!  
GG: you can be so dumb sometimes john!  
EB: so what do i do?  
GG: :/  
EB: wow you are abusing that emoticon…  
GG: sigh what do you want me to say?  
EB: i dunno, like some tips would be nice?  
GG: dont you think we are all having the same problem right now?  
EB: are you??  
GG: yes dumbass!  
GG: why do you think i travel the island at night  
GG: its not REALLY like there are any monsters  
GG: why do you think dave is always sleeping in?  
EB: i kind of assumed he was just trying to match up to my time zone!  
GG: :/  
GG: i dont think we need to talk about the seer of light  
GG: we know her deal with the dark  
EB: aaaaaaaand?  
GG: and geez john do we really have to baby you?  
GG: we have enough on our own plates  
GG: we dont need yours too  
EB: ok well.  
EB: :/  
EB: ha!

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 23:28 –-

 

You do remember some of her outbursts of nastiness during the game, though they had been almost comical to you back then. Never had they been aimed at you, and when she decided to do just that, you decided it was just a little less funny than you had suspected it to be. No doubt, you had touched a sore spot. Your buddy wouldn't have left you hanging like that! Except she did, so instead of assisting her in finding a cure to your shared insomnia, you spent another night wide awake.

Maybe you understood where she was coming from, because by the time the sun reached its zenith the next day, you were too tired to even remember what being in a good mood could signify. You were faced by the choice of either the dark ceiling littered by phosphorescence, the empty musings of a piano, or your quite too inviting computer screen.  
It’s easy to tell which won.

You were still okay with this concept of asking for help, except not from Jade, and, understandably, that severely narrowed down your choices. It’s not that you think Rose isn't a viable source of information, on the contrary. However, for as much damage as the game had caused, you had also come to learn a lot about your friends. Rose had been the one playing a different game, and that much was true in the real world as well. She was always out there doing her own thing.

Dave, as it turns out, was ready to do just about anything to save your life. And by just about anything, you actually only mean anything. He had served as your safety net, somewhat. You knew you could just throw yourself into the throes of the game and there would be someone who would run up to catch you. That’s how you played, entirely selfishly. You’re hoping you haven’t made a habit out of it, but you can’t really be sure of that.

 

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering turntechGod [TG] at 01:08 –-

 

EB: i so know you are awake.   
EB: i know you are dying to talk to me.   
EB: dave.   
EB: dave.   
EB: daaaaaaaave.   
TG: egbert what   
EB: :)   
TG: fuck you   
TG: i know you know its three in the morning here   
TG: i know you are being an apathetic douche   
EB: you also know i know you have been awake this whole time!   
TG: yes very good   
TG: you are beginning to understand what being a strider means   
TG: sleep   
TG: what sleep   
TG: sleep is for chumps   
EB: and post-trauma victims, right?   
TG: oh you wanted to talk about your problems? why didnt you just say so   
TG: striders got you covered   
EB: i know you do. but how are you?   
TG: you know incurable sorrow   
TG: ravaging nightmares   
TG: all this heartache   
TG: just because   
TG: my best bro is losing sleep   
TG: so tell me whats up   
EB: oh haha, clever. well see the thing really is that i cant sleep.   
TG: yeah   
TG: id gathered as much   
EB: it kind of sucks…   
TG: tell me something i don’t know   
EB: uhhhh…   
TG: since the game?   
EB: huh?   
TG: no insomnia prior to the game   
EB: nope.   
TG: well what do you usually do to get to sleep   
EB: uh?   
TG: like i bet a guy like you would have some presleep rituals   
TG: well do you   
EB: bah that is so stupid!   
EB: …   
EB: but i do, or did.   
TG: any day now egbert   
EB: i used to listen to piano.   
EB: shut up i’ll let you know that is super cool.   
TG: well its not like all the pianos in the world were set aflame   
TG: just listen to your fucking piano man   
EB: it’s just…   
EB: not the same.   
EB: :(   
TG: well nothing really is now huh   
TG: and i take it silence is even worse   
EB: yeah pretty much.   
TG: what about you take this fucking obvious advice from one music lover to another   
TG: listen to some fucking music before going to bed   
TG: that isnt piano themed   
TG: dumbass   
EB: you’re the dumbass!!   
TG: ok   
TG: but try it   
EB: whatever   
EB: …   
EB: thanks dave

\-- turntechGod [TG] ceased pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 01:38 –-

 

You took his advice right away. Probably because you were somewhat intoxicated with the exchange. If there was one person your little adventuring hadn't really changed, it had been Dave, it had only made his true colors slightly more obvious. Your thoughts just happened to linger over Dave a little too long after the two of you ceased chatting. This had always been how it was.

But then you had been drowsy and tired and you just didn't want to put up with too many thoughts directed towards your best friend, because if it weren't creepy enough in the first place, it surely was when you were agonizing amidst the sheets of your beds in desperate need for sleep. So you promptly exited out of the infamous pianist’s playlist. Into the wild wasteland that was your music player. Well, not exactly. It very much resembled any other compilation formed by any boy of your age. Musical taste undefinable as it swerved in and out of different genres, slight inclinations highlighted by established patterns in musical key preferences and all of the other issues that didn't really matter all that much.

It didn't work immediately. Probably because you had not known at the time what you were looking for. All compositions were the same, simply too easy to decompose. All of the elements resulted in the chaos you had provoked not even a few weeks ago. You still felt as if you were on the battlefield. You still felt as if you were on Prospit. You still felt like you were everywhere. Instead of the gentle caress of sleep, you suffocated under the swaddling of reminiscence. Your fingers could not reach out to shut down the device, you were stuck in the webs of endless music and endless reminders.

Somewhere amidst your almost drunken state, a voice rose. At that time of the night, it was impossible for you to recognize the singer. All you seemed to acknowledge was that his voice was too throaty, too rough, something you had never picked up on before or had never bothered to analyze as you did instruments. You weren't lulled into a sleeping state exactly. On the first night it had been close to indescribable. An element of the voice reached deep within you, applying great pressure to the organs organized underneath your skin. You were imbibed into sleep, as if a flip had switched on, shoving your body temperature into completely different numbers and snatching the waking world from right underneath your feet.

At your young age, you imagined waking up from it was much similar to what it should feel like waking up from a hangover, or a particularly severe peanut allergy reaction, maybe. The music was still blaring in your ears. Your hair was matted with cold sweat, the same that coated your entire envelop of skin. It felt as if you had been punched in the gut repeatedly. Most of all, you were rested. Confused, feeling mostly intensely strange, but rested. To make matters worse, the feeling lingered. A tingling in your legs, a creeping sensation you just couldn't rub off the back of your neck and an uncontainable warmth you just couldn't manage to swallow down.

The key point was that you had slept and that the advice had been golden. In retrospect of future events, you can shift all the blame to Dave, because he had suggested as much. Honestly, it would have only been a matter of time.

The first days, you were capable of capturing another pattern, analyzing the situation as you were rendering yourself famous for. Not all voices could stab you with sleep. Typically, they were male singers, with deep, slithering, penetrating voices. It wasn't always the case. But whenever a voice could build up in contrast with a bass line or such, your palms went sweaty and your eyelids went heavy.

Eventually, it did dawn to you. After all, you had only been thirteen, it was fairly understandable that you had not been sexually aware up until that very point. It was when you had been thrashing particularly violently in rhythm to a song that was playing too loud and on the verge of sleep, that it came to you that maybe you were getting off to the play of voices.  
It was one of the weirdest revelations of your life.

However, over time it also proved to be the truth. The more you advanced in time, the less satisfactory the singing became. The closer your fingers edged towards touching yourself. And eventually, yes, you did touch yourself to deep, throaty voices in the aims of falling asleep. You tried to quit, like the confused teenager that you were. It turned out that it was now a requirement for your sleep.

The sheets clung to your clammy skin, the beats of instruments swallowed its rustles, the glowing from your ceiling illuminated the movements of your hands, the blood rushed to your ears and other body parts, it was the most erotic experience of your young life, and you were forced to suffer through it night after night.

Now, six years later, when you’d concocted plans to share a place with Dave, this particular predicament of yours had completely escaped your mind. Why should it be a problem? It shouldn't be a problem, it shouldn't interfere with anything.  
All things considered, that is a pretty fucking stupid conclusion.

 


	2. Chapter 2

It  _was_ a pretty fucking stupid conclusion.

Especially considering that it was _Dave Strider_.  Not that anyone else coming close to your personal bubble of weird fetishes wouldn't have been just as bad.  Only because it was very much more likely that he would come to do just that.  You wish you were speaking of some tactless or invasiveness his childhood had pushed him to pick up, but really, it was just entirely your fault. Even had this not been a possibility, had your behavior been exemplary and in absolutely no case suspicious, it would still be one of the worst living arrangements. 

Even though you’d come up with this idea, even though you had in no moments protested, even though you had conveniently forgotten the issue, it theoretically should have been a fucking nightmare for you.  Sharing living quarters with one Dave Strider should have basically equaled to subjecting yourself to torture.

Acknowledging that voices had the sort of power to dowse you to sleep (and also to help you get it up) also unlocked a lot of other mystifying feelings.  You had this major thing for voices, something that reached farther than the realms of sexual fetishism.  Or maybe this too had to do with the game.  Maybe the strange affinity you had gained with the element of air had pushed you closer to the tool of speaking.  A voice was birthed by lungs, by air.  And you, let’s repeat it, have a _major thing_ for voices.  But are also the heir of breath, therefore you might not be entirely insane.

Anyhow, you find voices to be the most appealing and revelatory attribute of a person.  You _were_ happy that all three of your best friends had lovely voices, it made it very clear that you had picked them sensibly.  Rose had a singsong voice, her words bloomed from her pursed lips and you had no other choice but to treat them as elegant projections of her overly present femininity.  Jade could somehow curl her words in the way she wrote them down, all squiggly lines, randomly placed high notes and over all a true treasure.  Your heart swelled whenever you had the opportunity to listen to them.  Your heart wasn't the only organ that swelled when you heard _Dave_ ’s voice however.  And god that sounds awful, but it’s nothing less than the truth.

You can proudly say that his voice doesn't correspond to the voices in the songs that really got you going, well, you don’t have that much pride in the subject, but…  Nonetheless, it can’t be so superficial.  Dave’s voice isn't particularly deep or throaty, most of the time anyway. Well, maybe it was, but he sure didn't go around singing or anything.  In your ultimate best defense, you’d been just as into his voice at the peak of his adolescence, when it had been just a bit squeaky and utterly breaking all over the place.    
That is actually the very worst defense you could offer. 

This only means you've had quite some time to think this one over, to use enough of your intellect to see how sharing a place with the guy would be taunting at best, and agonizing, well, probably.  It also serves as reminder that maybe you just haven’t been all that honest with him. And maybe you are just slightly embarrassed by events already past.

Well, more like mortified.

It had been about half a year since the game, and so you were stuck in between thirteen and fourteen.  Maybe you’d gathered that for a boy of your age, it was maybe okay to be masturbating every night.  You hadn't really gathered if it was normal for male lead singers to get you hot and bothered, but the lack of knowledge didn't do much to modify the situation.  So, it sort of incorporated itself into your routine.  You got ready for bed, you took a shower, you put your earphones in, you glanced at the stars above you, you tried to ignore it, but you never could.

It had happened while you were unsuccessfully ignoring it.  Your hips grinding against the mattress as you did your best to keep your hands busy, hold on to the framing, the sheets, your own hair, anything not to think of it. The music was building up and you knew you could avoid this.  You could go from being completely wanton to completely dejected, but…  But your phone was buzzing then, on your night stand.  It had been in fact buzzing for the entire length of the song, you had missed it of course.

You all but tossed the music player aside, as if it had suddenly caught fire, as if you had been caught red-handed, which was, sort of the case.  With a familiar hum in your ears and accelerated breathing you stared at the light of your cell phone, willing it to cease.  Eventually it did.  But only to pick right back up.  It could have been important.  It could have, but Dave’s name appearing on the caller id begged to differ.  For how cool he came off to be, he was awfully clingy.  So you really shouldn't have picked up.  You were thoroughly aroused and the last thing you needed to do was to listen to someone speak directly to you.

Someone who you had not heard speak since the game and, correspondently, since your understanding that voices meant just about everything.  You shouldn't have picked up, but the time grasped your attention.  As much as he claimed he didn't sleep, you weren't expecting him to ring you up in the dead of night, when he should be slumbering away in Texas.  The concept of all four of you exchanging phone numbers for _emergency situations_ painted itself vividly into your mind.  You picked up and gave a huge middle finger to your friendship.

“Dave,” you growled with the realization of your dry throat and your undeniable need for water.

Speaking your best friend’s name while you were ridiculously turned on hadn't exactly been on your to do list and as it should have been expected, it was terrifying.

“What’s up?” The phone did nothing to conceal the awoken quality to his voice, how he had most likely not even attempted sleep.  And how oddly attractive the tenor it held was.

“Oh you know, there are so many things up at this time of the night,” but really you could not translate your words into a snippy form, because the only thing you could have replied with that held the truth would have been something along the words of ‘Oh you know, there’s only ever my dick up at this time of the night.’

“Oh that’s cool I guess,” he added lightly.

You withdrew your breath.  You found powerful voices that sung their heart’s contents to be arousing, but you hadn't yet understood you felt them attractive just in general.  It’s not as if you go around popping boners at the concept of people speaking to you.  Yet, for some unfathomable reason, having Dave speaking to you while you were in bed, in the dark, and still relatively wet from your shower, did strange things to you. 

“Is there something you needed?” You squirmed a bit, only to resist the impulse of your hand to shut off the conversation, or to touch yourself, you’re not sure which it had been.

“Well, no,” his tone lingered as if to leave place to add on, but he didn't do so. 

You were about to _blow up_ , you hoped you could close the conversation off and store this away in the compartment of your memory that simply served no purpose.  Obviously, life couldn't be that easy: that isn't what happened at all.

“If there isn't anything else then…”  But, still in your ultimate defense, you had attempted to close things off.

“Egbert wait!” His voice hitched in a rush.

And you _groaned_.  Later turning your head onto your pillow to hide your flaming cheeks, though there really wasn't anyone there to hide them from.  For all the times people had called your name, never had you felt it stir in the pits of your stomach.  Not until you made it out alive of the game and heard Dave’s voice again.  After that, your name from his lips should have been banned.  Except you couldn't exactly use your ban hammer in that first compromising situation, you could only writhe in between your sheets, attempt to glimpse at the Glow-in-the-Dark Stars and hope you could replace this desire with the instead nostalgic longing you held in regards of space.

No such luck.

“What?” You breathed uneasily, drawing the syllable out and shaking with the force of restraint you were using.

“D’you think you could just speak to me for a bit?” He continued on shyly, almost hesitating in his choice of words.

There wasn't really any room for you to be alarmed by cool boy Strider’s shyness.  There only really was room to note on how sensual his voice became at lower levels.

“Yeah this is definitely not an emergency situation,” you supplied weakly, not even sure if your words did come across despite the tiredness that had crept into them.

“Were you sleeping?  You sound weird.”

You exhaled out with a loud huff, feeling your eyes almost roll backwards.  Looking back on it today is awful enough.  Back then it had literally been the _worst_ experience of your life, and that had been after the dreadful trials you had gone through.  It should have been off-putting to have Dave, god of sexual innuendos, fall so shortly on your premise.  It was actually the opposite, completely and utterly the opposite.

“I wasn't sleeping,” you eventually gasped in retaliation, shutting your eyes at the nightmarish quality of the whole event and distinctively taking note of your pajama pants tenting.

“Oh that’s cool, still got that sleep problem?”

You were picking up on a lot of things here.  There was no sharp contrast between his imperative and his questioning tone.  His rhythm was slightly off, which was horrendously ironic for the DJ he claimed himself to be.  He articulated slowly, yet he breathed little pause in between his words.  Actually, he might have been a bit close to serving his lines in the pace of musical verses.  These were fine discoveries, if only had they not been so sexually exciting.

“Not…  Not really.”

Alright well, then you had definitely had your hand down your pants.  Maybe you were trying to will it back down, but that’s essentially meaningless and actually served the opposite of that cause.  You tried to cut off your breathing then, only because you thought this might be just a tad less obvious.  There was being unaware to the point of not getting that someone is sexually simulated, and then there was oblivious to the point of not getting that someone was touching themselves to the sound of your voice.

Dave Strider was in that latter category.

“So I guess my trick helped?”

The laughter died on your lips as your hands gripped your shaft, moving downwards in one slick movement.  Yeah, his trick had helped.  His trick had helped turn your world from a bleak one where everything held a tint of nostalgia to one that reddened with each passing second with the libido you had not known you possessed.

“Not really,” you repeated, gruffer this time.

You almost cursed the silence that spread then, highlighting your lustful pants and the tangible rustle of your beloved bed sheets.  You almost hung up even, your hips were lifting off the mattress, your hair was matted with sweat, you were simultaneously torturing yourself with shame and keeping the fire inside of you alive with every sound coming out of your friend’s mouth.

Probably should have been a clear shout out to never pick the phone up again at this time of the night.  Probably something you should have considered as well as the repercussions and lasting effects, at the age of thirteen and not today at the age of nineteen.

“Egbert?  What are you even doing over there?”

Always the questioning tone.  You tried your best to swallow down the feeling of slickness and thickness that had installed itself into your larynx, to no avail.  Instead you bit down on your tongue, furrowing your eyebrows at how moist the insides of your mouth had become.  It’s not like you should let yourself salivate over your best friend’s voice, but you can’t deny that it had been unbearably close.

You forced yourself to concentrate on the small pieces of plastic shining brightly in the darkness of your bedroom’s ceiling.  Concentrate on that and not on the throbbing of your nether regions or your left hand’s best efforts to regulate the situation.

“Dealing with you,” you wheezed out painfully, implying that you were dealing with his clinginess and late nights call.  When in all actuality you were merely dealing with the recent discovery that his voice might just be one of the most erotic things you have stumbled onto.

“Holy shit it’s not like I am asking you to give me Derse’s moon, you can stop with the heavy breathing,” he spoke dejectedly, seeming to think you were trying to communicate your lack of patience.

“What about you?  What are you even doing?” You matched up his tone, despite the troubles currently stirring you.  You had in fact noticed the change in the way you perceived his words.  It was quite likely that he was pacing.

“Usual cool stuff, y’know.”

He doesn't sound all too convinced by what he is saying, but that’s perfectly alright as you aren't _at all_ convinced by his shenanigans…

“What is really going on?” You manage to speak almost normally, finding concern amidst the waves of arousal as your eyes find the specks of light above you amidst the dark.

“Nothing.”

His reply is quick, blurred, very becoming, almost rough.  You don’t succeed at muffling your groan, your whole body seems to constrict on itself.  You are failing at this friendship more than you've failed at anything else before.  He’s quick to take it as a groan of impatience and nothing more and to speak up again.  Not helping your situation, not in the slightest.

“So I might be worried with something,” he half confesses in a muted way.

Your mouth opens once, twice, but only to swallow down some much needed air.  The fabric of your top is clinging to your skin.  You want out.

“Maybe I should go,” you almost whine, because let’s face it, self-control wasn’t really a thing you had needed to practice in the past, and right that instant it proved to be extremely torturous.  The bad news is, in time it only became increasingly painful.

“Please don’t go!”

You felt the need to hit your skull against some hard object, but instead it only dropped back onto your pillows.  Your left wrist twisted and you did all that was in your power to just keep extremely quiet.

“Listen, it’s just that, I don’t know where bro is,” he explains shortly, impatiently, probably as impatiently as he thinks you’re being.

“You…  Never…  Know where…  He is,” you time lamely, trying to multitask through this whole thing as conveniently as you could.  Using your vocal cords and stroking your engorged organ simultaneously was quite the achievement, one you are not proud of.

There had been a heavy sigh on the other side of the line and more than anything, you had wanted to hear it again.  At that point, you decided there was no making sense of your kinks.  Perhaps some carnal sound would provoke such a reaction in a young being, but you simply wanted him to make noise, even if it was some fragile heartfelt sigh, you desperately needed to hear it.

“I just don’t want to find his dead body,” he explained shortly, keeping all of his aloofness despite the terrible aspect of his words.

There were a lot of things left unsaid.  _I just don’t want to find his dead body, like I did back then_.  But you were far gone by then and so, rendered to the most vulnerable position in the world, soaked in sweat and squirming in your bed to the sounds of short replies, you reached new heights of insensitivity.

“I mean that’s going to happen one day, but then that will be the last time.”

You weren't so sure why your friend’s call for distress brought forth your need to hand him the reminder that actually yes you are all heading towards certain death, even if all of you had delved a bit too deep into the realms of immortality.  Then again, you aren't too sure why it had taken you all that time to notice how sexually attracted you are to him, to his voice nonetheless.

“It’s not like anything will compare to when I found _your_ corpse.”

Despite all of that, he managed to surprise you.  In the same instance, you managed to surprise yourself. Though you thought you were building up slowly this time, possibly in aggravation and in fear of rebuttal, you finally experienced the bane of male adolescent life, premature ejaculation.  And as quickest and most shameful wank you had subjected yourself to, your orgasm did strike you with surprising force.

But it was a force built on that same shame, that deep embarrassment and regret at how lightheartedly you had played the game while someone else traced you and picked up the pieces for you.  You were almost amazed at how your body temperature could take such a plunge.

It took you a few hours after the whole conversation to mull the whole thing over and to understand that you had actually called for his name in your moment of fated weakness and regrouped shame.  Perhaps _cried_ would be a more appropriate term.

His answer of “Uh okay,” did nothing to help you understand if he had had any idea of what just had happened or not.

You’re betting he didn't; because the same accident had tended to repeat itself in the spawn of the following years.

And you, for some incredibly stupid reason, did not link the fact that you can no longer get off to any other thoughts than Dave’s voice to the fact that you had proposed the idea of you two living under the same roof as an excellent idea.


	3. Chapter 3

As it is turning out to be, it certainly is  _not_ an excellent idea.

You two have been occupying the apartment for a little over three weeks now. You are mostly settled in and you have mostly adapted to the changes in lifestyle. However, you are now coming to an understanding with the torturous quality that could be attributed to living with Dave. It’s best not to get into _that_ right away.

The general idea is that not much has changed with you or the way you behave yourself. You like the idea that you are improving yourself as a person, but not the one that you could be changing. So there are still Glow-in-the-Dark Stars in the room you sleep in, even though it is not the bedroom you are accustomed to.

They’re not on your ceiling though, no. You aren't someone like Karkat Vantas, who is alright with claiming stars as his own creations, you don’t feel empowered enough to stick them to the ceiling. So you keep them inside your nightstand’s drawer. Not in the packet they had been sold in of course, but displayed on the sides, glowing softly when you open the drawer at night. It’s a nice _improvement_. The whole thing isn't constantly blowing over in your mind, instead you feel as if you can lock up entire universes in the confines of a nightstand.

Of course, it’s nothing like a universe. They are measly, easily breakable, laughably lame… You like to pretend you were the one who had been the Witch of Space though, and that you have this power to keep huge things in the palm of your hand. You don’t want to move on, but nor do you want to linger on events past. You’d like to improve on yourself.

Moving out from home feels like an improvement. Not that you’d _always_ pictured yourself as a daddy’s boy, but by no means were you anything but spoiled. So gaining some independence sounds like a definite improvement to you. Living with your best friend, the one who didn't want to adventure across the world nor travel around for research purposes, so the one who was also alright with living some average life, anyway, that had been the expected option, and understandably you had taken it. Even though, as it was earlier demonstrated, this might not have been the wisest of routes. How your internet friendship translated to real life had been a concern however.

Yes, you’d both been involved in some grandiose thing that pretty much redefined reality and its limits, but _boring, average, banal, real life_. Would you manage to withhold a friendship through that? It did turn out to be a somewhat founded concern, after all you were both a bit of introverts outside of the virtual world.

Things work in mysterious ways though, and you find that this, is an outstanding advantage as you two don’t really exchange as many oral words as you do exchange texts from different rooms and snicker at the irony of this activity. The place is incredibly small though, surprisingly small and a bit on the cheaper side of things. But always too warm and almost too cozy. So you are basically always in each other’s faces. And, the first week, when you listen to him speak and are struck with the horrendousness of what you might have thrown yourself into, you are incredibly relieved to know that having him basically inhaling the air you are exhaling with the proximity changes absolutely nothing to the way you perceive him.

The place is overheated, when the two of you brush body parts, and that is quite often, it just feels warm and not exciting or any of the feelings that rush through you at other times of the day and that you wish you could dismiss. There is no such thing as _sexual tension_ between you. Only unlimited comfort and grateful smiles. Because, for all the bullshit this infatuation is causing you, it does not define the limits of your world and of your experiences. The bonds of your friendships are quite simply breathtaking at times, or most times even.

This whole thing of shared experiences, shared trauma, shared childhood, shared adventures, and shared heroism has really rubbed onto your relationship. He reads the newspaper in the morning, and you understand when he brushes his fingers over words that have been printed out in a teal color. When you had been moving in and he had walked in on you installing the newly purchased stars, he had understood. You understand that he never turns his back on you, he understands that you have stopped playing the piano, you understand that he stores his shitty swords basically everywhere in the small apartment, he understands that you whistle when you are quiet and exaggerate the swoosh of air leaving your lungs.

You understand each other at a level where you can simply not judge it as romantic. Perhaps if you _had_ understood the complexities of troll romance you would be enabled to label the relationship, but you are at a standstill for now. All you know is that the cohabitation requires little wording and that is absolutely perfect as the other way around could possibly jeopardize it all together.

It’s still relatively new and so you still aren't over the phase of _marveling_. This was it; you were actually living with Dave Strider. A boy you had met on the internet, who had seemed so far away, yet had always treated you as a precious friend. A young teenager who had put his own life at stakes over and over again for your success. And now a man who could completely control the flow of your blood with the simple tool of wording, but also a man who could dull your heartbeat with absolutely nothing at all, slow down the pumping of that blood altogether.

The adjective ‘ _domestic_ ’ had most likely been foreign to the pair of you in the past. On one hand your home life consisted of your father solely, the smell of tobacco that emanated from him, the serious attire, the prideful and warm feeling he installed in you. The rest was but a blur of confectioneries and pranking. His was the elusive shadow of an unobtainable role model, the ridiculously out of the ordinary things he would collect and the tests he always built Dave up to. And the rest of his life was a mirage, the blurred reflection of hoped coolness. Neither one of you had had the classic white-laced upbringing, no one in your group of players had. However, this new turn of your life is looking a lot like that.

It wasn't that vaguely liberating feeling of knowing that Dave had your back and that you could do as you pleased, it was an evolution of that, another _improvement_. You had his back too. Home life now was like clockwork, a metronome, you knew all of one another, you knew how to play the field, which topics to tread around, the little things that will make the other smile. Sometimes, it’s just a tad overwhelming.

Dave collects different types of post-its, this, you haven’t really come to understand yet. But you assume it’s a weird inclination, as it is when you also want to stick things in odd places, like the inside of your drawer. Sometimes you don’t find them and when you do it’s just too late. You try to start your own collection though, you keep all the ones you can retrieve. And so far, you are doing well enough, a dozen or so in three weeks seems to be an acceptable number. At first you’d picked them up instinctively, after all, this is something you would like to encourage, the more ways you find to communicate wordlessly, the better.

It had been an odd sort of timing when it had finally struck a chord with you. You hadn't even known he had been absent until you’d picked up the television’s remote, to which he had gracefully stuck the post-it. It had been apple-shaped, cutely so, red and everything. It made it slightly more difficult to make out his words.

gone to buy apple juice

-TG

It had been weirdly appealing, the way he had used the red apple to display his red words; admitting to having gone out and sought out apple juice. Mostly, it was the way he had signed. The way he had always signed. But in that moment, alone, when he was nowhere near to see your reaction to the ironically affectionate notes he leaves around the place, your façade shatters slightly. _This really is Dave Strider._

You hadn't realized how hard it might be to come by these sorts of revelations. You avoided change, favored improvement. In the same way, change in others installed a bad feeling in you. You hadn't questioned change in Dave for a very long time. There had been very confusing things you had stumbled onto during your intergalactic journey. You had had to distinguish which Dave was which during the game, and in the midst of that, you had lost grip of the fact that he was indeed Dave.

Not something you had realized, but something you had understood when you had picked up that one note. He had been thoroughly confused when he had walked through the door, plastic bag in hand and sunglasses firmly in place, and you had still been sitting on the couch, meekly crying over the note.

He’d sat down with you, wordlessly as always, and rubbed your back until it passed. But even then, when emotional proximity was combined with physical proximity, there had been no passing sensation or need to conquer him sexually or romantically.

Truly, it really was when he decided to open his mouth that it all went to hell. He can’t catch on though, he might never catch on, because there aren't really any created opportunities for that, but you wish he would just put you out of your misery. You would even be alright with him exposing your true colors, if only to put an end to it. Then again, when you mull things over, understand that, yes it hasn't even been a month and that at some point he will become chatty with you, you are paralyzed with an insurmountable fear. It feels superficial, it feels as if only your gut is involved in this desire and not your heart, not truly, so you can’t come to understand why it has you so shambled up.

You've come to learn a lot about his voice. All of it probably. The pitches he’ll use, the octaves he will climb, the vowels he shortens, the ones he doesn't, the grammar he uses… It is almost strictly from closed doors though, and this has become your hideout.

Is he aware that the walls are almost transparent with their thinness? Maybe not.  
You are by no means ‘ _living the life_ ’, but from your combined criteria, you are living _your lives_. So you still cave in to childhood nothings that maybe shouldn't be such a thing today. The internet is still a place you both love tremendously, for unspoken reasons. Bringing the party together namely… You still spend outrageous amounts of time slouching one against the other around the apartment with your respective laptops, typing away on the World Wide Web.

Though he’d always had a knack for blogging, you had never taken him for a video blogger. You are betting he doesn't take you as someone who would take him as a video blogger either. The reasons are slightly obvious. He’s never mentioned it or hinted it, he’s never opened a window connected to it in your presence. Most of all, he records it at nightfall when the two of you are attempting slumber in your adjacent bedrooms. You are more than certain you could find these places he uploads them to in no time; you don’t try. Hearing it is enough of a trip already.

The first night moving in, neither of you slept, you mostly slid around the apartment in socks, ignoring the piles of cardboard boxes. It called for a true celebration, one you were happy to partake in. The second night, it had _finally_ hit you that you were about to try to find sleep with Dave right there in the next room. The thought alone was so terrifying you couldn't even bring yourself to glance at your earphones. The night had been a train wreck as you came to understand it was time to say farewell to sleep once more.

It had been so painful that you can’t remember if it had been the third night or if it had been the following one. But amidst your intense lip biting and hand fisting, Dave’s voice rose above, in the same way the melody of your music player had shined brightly on the night he had first suggested you should change your falling to sleep routine.

You’d been so tired, it had not dawned to you that he was projecting his voice to his computer. All that had really mattered had been the cascade of words, the odd timing that had never really changed, the melodic line of his simply breathed words. Above all else; his voice, in the bedroom next to yours. So you’d climbed the echeladder in the way you least wanted to experience. You went from getting your hands dirty solely on the repertory of words your mind could conjure from Dave’s mouth; to actually experiencing it.   
And you just know that one day, one day you won’t be able to force yourself to keep your mouth shut to the point of soaking your tongue in blood. One day, sound will escape you and it will irreversibly be captured by his microphone in the next room. For now you just listen to him basically rap out his opinions in front of a computer screen and you are vaguely aware that this should be disheartening or put out a lame image of his character and pastimes, but this is just a problem really. The biggest of problems. The one that is keeping you from enjoying this cohabitation thing.

Naturally, this isn't a nightly occurrence on his part. You have a few theories on his behavior though, not that you try to form them, they just happen, spontaneously combust into being. He might be sensing that you aren't too articulate in the realms of oral language. That’s not true of course, you are just restraining yourself from letting up to your desire too much. In fact, you believe he needs to speak. He needs someone to talk to, or at least when he worries, and as any survivor of the ordeal you had gone through, worrying must be his middle name.

You can trace it back to the very first time he had called you. He had worried over his brother, and so he had wanted _you_ to speak to _him_. Needless to say, you had failed on more than that single field when it had come to friendship on that one night (and most nights). Here again, he must not understand that you hear every single word of his exchanges. He phones Rose mostly by the sounds of it, which seems natural as they share genetic materials. For how far away you had felt from the domestic life as kids, you think he might juxtapose Rose to the role of the mother he had not had.

No matter how personal those conversations are, you still get off to them too. As long as it involves his voice, it’s almost unavoidable. He definitely doesn't know you are listening for all the times he mentions his roommate in his videos and for all the times he simply calls you ‘John’ while speaking to Rose, like he never will to your face. And every time, unceremoniously, it leads you to your undoing and in the post-coital blindness you imagine that he might think of you as much as you think of him.   
He doesn't of course. This is unrequited attraction at its best.

You wonder what it would be like if he didn't mix tunes as much as he did sing. Actually, you don’t like wondering about that quite that much. He takes his showers in the morning mostly, when it’s perfectly acceptable for you to escape somewhere and to avoid him. But on the rare occasions that he does so at night, it’s torture at its most intense level. Where the wall aligned to your desk was the wall to which Dave’s bed was pressed against on the other side, well, the wall against which your bed is aligned is the one directly next to the shower. And so, as he hums away in the shower, you hear all of it. He might as well have been humming the notes into your ear instead.

You’ll scramble to your knees and almost rub yourself against the wall, with the desperate need to just _do something_ about his voice.  
In all cases though, it was always contained in the confines of a dark room you call your bedroom, and in all cases it still remains the alternative to the lingering feelings you hold for the adventures long gone.

Tonight, he called Rose, and you would be a bit more turned on had you not caught on to the subject of conversation. So you are thoroughly sobered and nowhere near sleepy when you decide to recuperate your place next to your computer.

 

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 23:48 --

TT: I think it would be best for me to announce that I have just settled with your dearest roommate that I will be dropping by for a visit in the following days.   
EB: hi rose!   
EB: i didn’t know you were anywhere near!?   
TT: I will be shortly. I do hope I am in no way intruding on your home life.   
EB: i don’t even know what you mean. :o   
EB: but we haven’t been living here very long, so don’t expect anything perfect.   
TT: I am fully aware, neither would I expect perfection from the pair of you.   
EB: ouch!   
TT: John, are you quite sure this visit pays no problem?   
EB: of course not!

Of course it did. Company meant discussion. Discussion meant awkward displays of infatuation and attraction. You don’t see how your situation could possibly worsen though, so you just go with it.


	4. Chapter 4

As a matter of fact, the worsening of your situation is now appearing as inevitability.

In the most ideal of worlds, all four of you would live in some great mansion somewhere. Maybe your father and Rose’s mother and Dave’s brother too. And you would line up Jade’s stuffed grandfather with your grandmother’s urn. The house would be the house of the survivors and all of you would live in that same comfortable orb you already share with Dave. All of you would want to take the same direction in life and all of you would have set the same objectives. Almost more importantly, Dave wouldn't have phoned you all those years ago.

  
… Or you wouldn't have any perverted inclinations towards voices.

It isn't an ideal world however, it is but the word all of you have succeeded at preserving. So, here, Jade wants to travel the world, to discover all of the wonderful things you had almost annihilated. Rose is sensibly the same, wanting to gather all the knowledge that had almost slipped past her. Rose’s mother and Dave’s brother haven’t spoken at all. Your grandmother and Jade’s grandfather are still in their respective household’s living room. And you just want to have banal life experiences. Dave is alright with staying with you, so he does. Sometimes you wonder where he would go if you had left the way Jade and Rose had. You wonder if he is still following you as he had done during the game.  
You also have this definite problem where voices are just the most beautiful things. Precious, the true windows to souls. For some reason, Dave’s voice is appealing to you like no other is. So you try to make the best of it. Because this isn't an ideal world. But it’s a world where the both of you work odd jobs, go to silly things like cooking classes, fuck up your sleeping schedules and spend your time as detachedly as you can. A world where you are extremely happy and no matter what your other friends are up to, they still remain your true companions, the people you will always run or _fly_ to.

Rose is the one who had decided to fly to you this time, but not through the roads of air you had summoned during your journey, but through the quite convenient and generic routes traced by aircrafts.

The reunion was everything it should have been, too much laughter and smiles that threatened to sprain your facial muscles. Dave’s reluctance to let her hug him, and your great leap to catch her in your arms. Lots of merciless teasing on your way back home, catching up that lingered on meaningless details, and her emergence into the bubble of understanding that had already enveloped you and Dave.

That had been yesterday. And already as you had come back home, at the wee hours of the night, you had guessed the contours of the upcoming dark cloud of trouble.

“Would I be right to presume I will be occupying my brother’s room while residing under your roof?”

You hadn't replied right away, because you liked the way her voice would waft, float up like soapy lavender colored bubbles. Your chance slipped away though, as Dave dropped her suitcase unceremoniously.

“Nope. Guess again, you’re not touching my stuff.”

You might have quirked an eyebrow at this, at the implications to be specific. His stuff probably had more than enough of your fingerprints on them for yourself to claim it as your own. Probably because he, as you did, considered his stuff as your stuff. He might as well have said, ‘ _You’re not touching our stuff_.’

Had he said it, perhaps she would have not pursued her questioning.

“I must say I am a bit taken aback at the prospect of using the bed of a man who is not of my family, but regardless…”

“Uh, weren't you going to sleep on the couch?” You corrected on impulse, though a bit shakily.

Your bedroom was yours however, not a place that belonged to Dave at all. It made you a bit queasy to think of a woman slithering underneath the covers of your bed, when you had soiled them on too many occasions. It was a true place of horror and shame and it was yours entirely. And for as astute she is, you don’t want her pulling any conclusions on any details of your bedroom that could compromise your little shameful secrets.

“I most certainly was not,” she resolved with her still singsong voice, pursing her lips and highlighting the dark lipstick she had taken to wearing.

“Lalonde this is our fucking place and you are sleeping on the fucking couch.”

He had stalled away to his room as he had spoken the words, leaving you alone with Rose. Leaving you with very unsettling feelings. There was never anything patronizing about him calling you by your last name, but seeing him do as much with Rose was _exhilarating_. Maybe it was for the sheer fact that you knew he called her Rose in the privacy of your own conversations, though you also know he refers to you as ‘ _John_ ’ to everyone else but you. Maybe it was the swearing. Maybe it was the tone of voice. It wasn't something you experienced a lot, that was a given.

You needed space between you and Rose then, between you and everyone. You needed walls around you and dark ceilings. You needed to muffle down that longing for someone who definitely wasn't and definitely will never be yours.

Instead, you proposed to help with setting up her bed. She had looked reproachful. You haven’t yet decided if it was for the whole bed ordeal or because of other implications. Regardless, it had been late, and you would have thought she would have let it slip with her quickly approaching dreams.

Actually, the look did not wear off at all. And it is only now, in midday, that you are finally getting respite. But for many reasons, you wish she would divert her attention back to you, namely, because you are not used to the shouting at all. You had gone from living with an overly prideful father to living with the never disturbed Dave Strider. There hadn't been place for fighting in all of that, only in pesterlogs in which trolls seemed to like to abuse the Caps Lock key.

“Would you just shut up, you insufferable prick?”

Her over enunciation reached new heights with insults it seemed, more importantly, there was this all new shrillness to the way she expressed herself when pushed into combativeness.

You can’t remember if this is what you were even expecting from her visit. But surely you are now happy that your wish to someday experience a complete family had never been granted. If Rose and Dave’s bickering related to any parental feud, you were more than perfect with your lonesome father.

“The fuck is your problem?”

Now you remember your expectations of this visit. She would push your roommate into positions where he needed to be vocal and this would shatter your problem meter to a thousand dangerous shards. You hadn't known it would translate itself into hostility, but the format doesn't really matter all that much in the long run.

You’d left to go to the bathroom, feeling anxious with the way Rose’s eyes were following your form, as if attempting to dissect your mental state. Then you’d locked yourself up in there, took a few deep and calming breaths and pasted on your best smile to face your favorite people in the world. You had returned to this yelling. And you’d sat down at one of the kitchen’s chairs. They had not halted. They had not even glanced your way. They kept at it, storming across the kitchen as the angry pair of siblings they really were. Though you have no idea why they are fighting. The subject hasn't been brought up, the only things they are bringing up are increasingly original insults.

It’s a good thing you've taken a seat. With every jab Dave makes, your throat constricts further, your eyes start swimming, your being starts burning and your pair of jeans become just as constricting as your throat. You aren't following the conversation at all, until your name hits you, slaps you across your face, reinforces the terrible need to hear more of Dave’s voice.

“You never listen to others, you only really ever hear what you want to hear!” He’d exclaimed almost wildly, though his hands remained in his pockets, his demeanor begging to claim him as someone undoubtedly cool. Then again the muscles straining in his forearms told a different story than one of nonchalance.

“Rich coming from you! Tell me, have you finally mastered the art of avoiding topics of conversation, or are your skills still as obvious as ever?” She’d fought back with just as much volume, if not more of a darker aura.

“At least I don’t forget them,” he snapped coldly and then his eyes tracked you out, but you couldn't tell. Not because of his shades, but because it was suddenly very difficult to breathe, and even more so to concentrate.

You weren't ready for this. You weren't ready for the way his neck tensed with his words, or the way his jaw locked in between them, the general spectacle that is his spoken eloquence really. You don’t want anything to do with that for the moment, but you are glued to your seat.

“Enlighten me dear brother,” she prodded as she saw their standstill and how they would remain as such unless concessions were made.

“How many times have I told you John doesn't like the sound of other people’s voices? You just decide to waltz in here and scream your pretty lungs out?”

This is when your name drops. This is also when your stomach drops. You aren't exactly alleviated of your lustful feelings, your breath is still coming out in short pants and your hands are most likely just as tightly fisted as his are. You’re a reddening wreck, but his words shock you into a higher state of awareness.

What was that he was claiming?

This is also the moment Rose chooses to remember her glaring campaign and to find you with her eyes, though you had been conveniently sitting nearby for most of the scene. You feel very indecisive as you are now wishing they would just go back to screaming, not to looking your way. This was not a good combination, not a good turn of events, not a good anything… Her lips purse, more than usual, her eyes narrow to bare slits and you know she is seeing right through you.

She is seeing how very turned on you are now and this time there is no way of pulling yourself out of this. You open your mouth, in an attempt to salvage something, nothing comes up. The effort is much too difficult.

Her head snaps away from you and you are washed away with relief, greedily gulping down the air that had been escaping you for those last few moments.

“Does he always look like this?”

Her tone had retired from fighting mode altogether. Her dainty thumb was pointing over her shoulder, to you. You did not like the sound of this. You did not like how Dave looked your way to see what she meant. He didn't come to your defense as she impolitely referred to you, he went with it, because he had sensed the shift in moods.

“Same as always,” he mumbles, and it sends electricity up your spine, tingling over your senses and the impeding fear that was arriving in your gut.

Rose had wanted to know if you had been getting off to her or to Dave. Clearly, she could see your predicament. And Dave had just sold you out. Yes, you always looked like this. Yes, you always lusted after your new roommate and longtime best friend. Yes, you might be a bit deranged, no, right now it doesn't matter so much.

“Perhaps we should discuss this.”

This time, she is looking at you again, hands on her hips, but with a new shine in the depth of her eyes. She is finding this amusing, you, absolutely do not. Was there really anything to discuss? From your perspective, not at all. You had this weird fetish, and your best friend had fallen into this category and right now you just needed to get over it. You certainly did not need to discuss it.

But under the scrutiny of the two almost identical faces, you can’t find those words. Instead, your feet find the ground. It’s not until you hear the slam of your bedroom door that you fully understand that you have fled the scene. You had never considered yourself to be cowardly, in this case it had… Just, sort of happened. You had been trapped and you had fled, that was all there was to that story.

Except you haven’t fled at all, you've only put a door between you and the problem. What you are hoping for is that you can emerge from your room in a few minutes and that all will be forgotten, that the subject will be dropped, maybe the fright will have spooked the weird attraction out of you. For now however, you are shaking, still erect with the shouted words, but pupils also dilated by the concept of possibly being caught for good this time. So, instead of running to a drawer full of stars or blasting piano concertos and finding refuge in the things that had nothing to do with sexual attraction, you collapse against the door, breathing heavily.

Your knees can no longer support your weight. Your feet had shot out on their own accord and it was now ridiculously hard for you to capture back your usual sense of control over your body, which is already very little considering your typical indecent behavior towards Dave.

When your breathing hushes enough, you slip down completely, your arms encasing your face as you pull your knees in, firmly planted against the door in the well-founded resolve to remain completely alone. The words still come to your ears, as the walls have not thickened in the last night. They are muted however, the promises of horrifying confrontations.

“You really should listen to me more often,” his voice floats up, broken slightly, unlike the way he usually speaks. Unlike the way he ever speaks. Not to his computer, not to you, not even to Rose.

You remember his past words. Had it been that he really wasn't all about silence as you thought he had been? Had he thought his oral outbursts bothered you? Was he keeping quiet only to accommodate you? Sadly, it did accommodate you, and so your guilt grew tenfold. Possibly he was worried. You hoped not. You hoped he was above those sorts of things. Above your foolishness and silly antics.

“You really should listen to John more often.”

You feel your heart thud against your ribcage and so you try to make your position even compacter, you try to pull everything into that sole heartbeat, forget about the way his voice shook up your walls and about Rose’s eyes and her pursed lips.

“That’s all I ever do,” he bit back sharply, loudly enough for it to have been spoken next to you.

You hated yourself for still fantasizing about his voice as you felt the bare remains of your dignity slip away from you.

“Don’t you see you’re hurting the poor boy?”

“He’s never run out of a room until you showed up!”

It’s hard for you not to block your ears, not to drown the sound out, but you pull through, your breathing coming out heavily once again as you await the final blow.

“Oh come on Dave, surely you've noticed,” she exclaims almost hysterically, you could hear her high heels tap against the wooden floor of your apartment as she is surely closing the space between her and Dave.

“Noticed what?” He asks gruffly.

For once, his voice is a little bit too deep, a little bit too hoarse, and awakens in you all of your past awareness. All of the resolve you had lost in the slow settling into the life you led peacefully here. It reminded you of the first voices who had led you to sleep. Dave was always just too gentle, too soft. And though you wanted to squeeze his vocal cords until they no longer held a bewitchment over you, his voice never gave you that rush to do something with your life, only to stand still and to let things be.

This time, you’d awoken. The PDA blinked into life under your fingers in mere yet important seconds. And you thanked your lucky stars for Jade’s claim to always be prepared with at least five computers. Though it had only rubbed on the rest of you as one sole computer, it was good enough.

You heard the buzz of Rose’s phone, cutting off what would have been the most mortifying moment of your life.

EB: rose shut up!

Her laughter sounds sad from where you are, you try to keep up with Dave’s sudden pushiness to know what she had been about to say, but you are too caught up in the torrent of purple text.

TT: Oh John, surely you aren’t being serious. It isn’t sane to live with someone who has captured your heart’s interest and to torment yourself with it.   
EB: heart’s interest!? that doesn’t sound like me at all.   
TT: John.   
EB: rose please what are you doing? do you even know what is going here?   
TT: I’ve got a fair idea.   
EB: well it’s wrong.

A few more windows filled with her text, and you were back out there, all three of you having moved on to other things. But you hadn't moved on, not from the expression she had used.  
Your heart’s interest?

That had nothing to do with anything. It was some strange infatuation for voices spawned from being the hero of breath and Dave was the unlucky victim. That’s really all you saw in it. That’s all you could see.


	5. Chapter 5

You've never been a ‘great sleeper’. Your sleep was shaky, off settling, very light and just not enjoyable in the slightest. You might even wonder why you are warding off insomnia when your sleeping clearly does nothing for you. Sleep experiences, all of yours, are equally bad, the next one is just as awful as the previous. But you have this recurring nightmare you had thought you had gotten rid of, mostly because you are now living with Dave. But after a full month of cohabitation, it has hit back full force. 

In your dream, there is a crowd, and you’re trying your best to run. You run as much as you can, but it never feels as if you leave your spot at all. After the game, you tried setting for the skies, to do the windy thing, sweep the crowd away. It was even scarier to have your powers feel completely useless. When you tried, you’d hear a small click, and then nothing. Nothing. You weren't the heir of breath, you were a little boy who couldn't make it through a crowd.

What really got to you was the entire crowd’s lack of awareness. You got that you had an ear for voices. A chime of laughter or the ring of heartfelt sobs truly reached to you. Understandably, laughter and tears were everyday things, not many were affected by this sort of display of emotion. However, there are things that a voice can do that didn't only horrify you, but were horrifying in general, because they were rarely demonstrated.  
Screaming will always bring attention.

In your dream, Dave is screaming, and you’re trying to get to him, but… But you’re the only one who seems to hear it.

You try to scream back sometimes, you push people out of your way, but eventually his cry of anguish cuts off, and you are left breathless, in the middle of unmoved faces. The dream will show up at random intervals, or so it seems. You had thought knowing in real time that Dave was alright, and not wondering how he was faring in some random state, would help solve this, and you thought it _had_.

This is the worst recurring dream you could have hoped for. Even in the first few years of knowing him, you had these. And despite not having heard his voice, you could tell it had been his scream, it had been an avalanche of red notes of despair and not the raw voice that shook you today.

Right now, you are running, pushing people out of your way, and he is screaming. This is the first time since you've moved in with him that sleep has pushed you into this. His voice is undeniably recognizable, though you have never really heard him scream at all. Not even in game when his shirt was thoroughly soaked with not only his, but others’ blood. Dave Strider did not scream. In your dreams, his screams were the most horrifying things conceivable.

You’re dreaming, and you’re running. Your ears have now drowned out the sounds of the crowd, but also the sound of horror. Your fingernails are clawing at the people getting in your way, you’re still the only one reacting.

“Let me through,” you call out, but even your own voice can no longer reach your ears.

You repeat the line over and over again, things only seem to be becoming harder, your pace is slowing, your breath isn't returning, you can barely see a foot straight in front of the other. You turn your eyes towards the sky, hoping for an answer, some sign…

A hand suddenly grasps your wrist and you choke on your last breath.  
You propel yourself forward in the hopes of escaping, and you do, but not in the way you had been aiming to. You’d escaped back to real time. Hunched forward as you had actually propelled yourself up to a sitting position, throat dried out, chest heaving and hands balled over your thighs. And, eerily enough, your left wrist is actually enclosed in someone else’s hand.

You hiccup in the post-terror state, snapping your head quickly to assess Dave. Clearly, as Jade had said a long time ago, all of you have issues with sleep. He most likely had not attempted sleep tonight, still dressed up in his usual getup, worn shoes on and all. His position was languid, the same lethargic feel to it as he leaned without any form of support, one hand safely tucked away in his pocket, but the other one still reaching out to you. It was hard to process anything else as he still sported his shades in the complete darkness of the room.

He must have opened your drawer though, you can make out the faint glow, you wonder if he thought this would have some sort of calming effect on you.

“What?” You’re still choking on air though, despite the laugh you try to force out.

“You said my name,” he on the other hand was breathing quite evenly.

You could, however, make out the defensive ting to his words. He looked unsure of himself, as if this had not been a conclusive reason to shake you, or more _grab_ you, out of your sleep. This is when you remember that this room is usually off-limits. It doesn't matter all that much in the present moment, you know full well you would have rushed to wherever Dave had been upon waking up, just to make sure.

In your dreams, Dave screamed. In everyday life, he did not scream. But you were always expecting him to, you were always ready to run to his side. You could count on him to save you without even the help of a sign, but you were always keeping an eye out, for a signal, just in case he was the one to need help one day.

“Did I? Oh that’s strange,” the laughter was still eerily close to choking, but you could manage this. You could manage shrugging this off, as long as he was still fine.

Though you’d thought you had been thoroughly shaking, as sleep faded away from the edges, you could tell it was the hand that was still gripping your wrist tightly that was shaking.

“You sure things are still cool?” He asked warily, as if awaiting your explosion, awaiting the return of your panicked dream state.

“As the other side of the pillow,” you said unsteadily, wondering why he wasn't letting go.

But you did also wonder why it wasn't the other way around, why it wasn't you who was clutching to him. Only seconds before, it had been your ultimate desire, to find him and to hold him. But that was only a dream. This is real. And in reality, he is the one clutching to you.

“You seemed… distraught,” he finishes as his hand retreats slowly, to imitate his other one and find refuge in his jeans’ pocket.

“Nope,” you reply cheerfully.

Or it was meant to be cheerfully. But, as his hand left your skin, you felt the same small _click_ as you did when you tried to take to the skies and couldn't. As if someone had suddenly removed a blade from your being. You were still choking on air, but this time it was different, it was different and it was too odd, too dark, and simply too unexpected for you to make sense of it.

“John—“

You hiccuped once more, but this time it quickly ascended to heavy sobs, and as you curled into yourself, you found that your cheeks had already been thoroughly wet, and that maybe, maybe you’d already been crying throughout this exchange, but he’d just been too considerate to make it too obvious.

And though in the past you would have burned down your bed before letting Dave in, he climbed on, the perfect mix of awkwardness and elegance, and you soon found yourself enveloped in his gangly arms. And finally, _finally_ , you could reach out to him as you never managed to in the realm of sleep, your fingernails dug into his shoulders in a way you can only describe as painful, but also impulsive, and so you did not restrain it. You hid your face away, even knowing that your tears must have been wetting his neck, you just really needed to pretend that this was the only factor of importance in that very moment. That he was here, no matter what here was.

“So, d’you want to talk about it?”

His tone was still even. It hit you again how preposterous it was for your mind to conjure his voice bending into violent screams, there could be no such thing surely. You shook your head. There really was nothing to talk about. An old nightmare from the past, resurfacing against all odds, the finer details of it did not sum up to all that much.

“Want to go back to sleep?”

And for all it was worth, there was still a positive connotation to the concept of sleep. It was still synonym to many peaceful and restful ideas, though once you were in it, you could not bring yourself to affirm them. Despite it all, you might have felt your sleep held some keys to the truth. You might have been a bit too conscious that what played out in your sleep could mean something big in the whole picture. The same way it had been in Sburb.

So you nodded your head and let him literally swoop you up and onto his lap. Your nails were still digging through the fabric of his top, your face was still hidden away and still, you could not control your tears or your breathing. But he had you in a safe hold, fingers ghosting through your damp hair. You couldn't imagine what he thought of this. Obviously, his brother must have never held him like this. Then again, your father had never held you more than he did give you a good tap on your back and a proud smile, but you like to imagine you would be able to soothe Dave if the opportunity showed itself.

When it became obvious that you weren't anywhere near sleep, and still a bit shaken, he started humming.

Predictably, something inside of you shifted. Blood and heat veritably rushed to your face, you feared your cheek would burn a hole through the part of his neck where it was pressed up against. Everything that had been hazy and slightly out of reach so far suddenly snapped into brilliant focus. And the security and care that had enveloped you as you had let him calm you down crumbled into piercing alarm. Your fist impulse was to shrug him off, push him away, violently even, get him away. You were scared, perhaps hurt, that he was using your weaknesses against you. What did he think? What was the plan with making you uncomfortable by singing.

Perhaps it was that that held off the urge to rub yourself up against him. It was that strange twist in your gut that whispered in your ear about manipulation, the same one you would suffer through when an exile made it a point to take command over you. You simply hadn't thought Dave would ever use something against you.

“Dave—“

But the notes only stumble as he tries to keep a rhythm, his hands notably still shaking as they lightly skim your ribcage. It was as you asked yourself how he could have possibly come to know your weakness that your paranoia dawned to you. Dave knew you needed music to get to bed, you had told him as much a long time ago. He knew you had an issue with pianos now. That’s all he knew.

What you had perceived as a vile threat was in fact but his best effort to accommodate you, to lull you into sleep with what he thought was the whole knowledge a best friend should possess.

“Don’t sing,” you mumble weakly, despite yourself, despite the gut-wrenching, the elation the notes put forward.

“I didn't think…”

His words were heavy, laced with things that made your insides coil tighter, your breathing deepen and even out, his words were heavy and as he paused to find the best ones, you left him no such opportunity, not even putting in the effort to find meaning in them.

“Just don’t talk,” you murmur deafly, feeling the darkness of the room spread truly as your own words cut him off. There was no more soft glow to salvage the situation, you had blocked all roads, all communication.

As always, he did as you told him. But as his chin rested on your shoulder, you couldn't help but to wonder if you had hurt him somehow. What you wanted… You wanted to pull him back, put some distance between the two of you and attempt to read him as an open book. His breathing had cut off, not a sound was heard from him.

Still, you fell asleep in his arms, his hand resting heavily on you, able to slumber thanks to the steady beat of his heart. You didn't want to think about anything, about the implications.

When you woke up, he was still very much awake, and your neck was very much sore from the odd position. In the morning’s hazy light, you could slightly see through his shades.  
He smiled, it was strained; he said nothing. You nudged him with some of your own words. Wishing him a good morning, asking as many questions as possible, ones that weren't relevant at all, just to make sure he knew you wanted him to speak up.

“Sheesh, such energy in the morning,” was what he replied with eventually, tired eyes suiting his tired voice.

There really just was no way for you to tell him that it had been too much. That you couldn't listen to his voice while falling asleep, on his lap, on your bed…. You weren't willing to subject yourself to that.

Such an incident did not occur again. He did not come to your bedside, even when you stood still in your bed, speaking out his name, testing the waters, wanting to see if he would come, sing you a lullaby or such. He didn't come back, but when you tried to manipulate him back there, you did hear the footsteps that traced their way to your bedroom’s door. You’d successfully kept Dave out.

At the end of the day, you didn't know if you were happy about it. You wanted to force the part of Dave that held insane sexual appeal towards you away from you, but you wanted to keep Dave, the best fucking friend in the world, much closer.

That and, the nightmare reached new heights of popularity. No amounts of touching yourself to the sounds of Dave’s voice on the other side of the wall before falling victim to sleep did anything to keep the nightmares at bay. In your dreams Dave screamed and it was absolute torture.

You still aren't quite sure what came over you, to reach out to Jade for help. Maybe you just needed to talk about it. You couldn't talk to Dave, because whenever you talked to him, you became just a bit too excited. And Rose has been increasingly scary with her intrusive questions. So you turned to the unpredictable member of your foursome.  
You hoped for the best, for the opportunity to heave the weight off your shoulders and to ask someone to help you carry it instead.

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 16:12 --

EB: jade.   
GG: john.   
GG: hihi why so serious?? :)   
EB: i was wondering if you could help me figure out this dream i’ve been having a lot?   
EB: i mean, that would be so appreciated! :)   
GG: oh well, yeah, of course john!   
GG: but are you sure i am the one you should be asking :?   
EB: well why not?   
GG: only this recurring business suspiciously sounds like freudian grounds…   
GG: and i feel like rose would be a whole load more helpful than i can be! :O   
EB: well maybe…   
EB: but you’ve always been the sleep specialist in the team! ;)   
GG: uuuuhm… are you sure?   
GG: i dont really want to disappoint you! :(   
EB: uh, well maybe i want to keep this like prospit exclusive, you know?   
EB: those other derse dreamers wouldn’t really get it :P   
GG: is that how it is!?   
GG: you know, you can be totally honest with me john!   
EB: that is EXACTLY how it is.   
GG: well so tell me about this dream!   
EB: you sure this isn’t a problem?   
GG: ‘course not, i could talk about dreaming all day long!   
EB: ok phew!   
GG: phew?   
EB: phew!   
EB: so this isn’t really as much of a dream as it is a nightmare…   
GG: oh no!!! john!!!!!!! :(   
EB: oh man, settle down!   
EB: it’s just a little upsetting in the long run.   
EB: . . .   
GG: totally understandable!   
GG: sooooo…?   
EB: so there is someone who is important to me in this dream.   
EB: and they scream a lot.   
EB: and idk…  
EB: i just don’t know how to put an end to it any more!  
GG: well like i already told you you can tell me absolutely everything!  
GG: go ahead, tell me who it is!  
EB: uh…  
GG: well?  
EB: is that really important?  
GG: i would think so, yes :/  
EB: it’s…  
GG: IS IT YOU??? :O  
EB: no!  
EB: it’s dave!!!  
GG: oooooh :)  
GG: I was soooo about to guess that!  
EB: yeah well. ever since i can remember, same stupid useless nightmare. but i thought it was gone…  
GG: well what do you think the trigger might be? :o  
EB: idk, it’s stupid, as if dave would ever scream.  
GG: well, often, we do the things we arent able to do in our dreams!  
GG: like tavros! who could fly on prospit, like he wanted :)  
EB: pretty sure dave doesn’t want to scream like a banshee.  
GG: maybe he feels censored?  
EB: …  
GG: …  
EB: …  
GG: you know!!  
GG: rose has been saying some pretty interesting things about your home life…  
EB: oh gosh! jade, look at the time!  
EB: i am so happy you were able to advise me. thank you thank you thank you!

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering gardenGnostic [GG] at 16:30 --

GG: :/

You were away from your computer in no time, almost startled with the force of the blood rushing through your veins. It felt as if absolutely everybody was in on you, the walls were starting to close in. And there Dave was, somewhere in the shitty apartment, keeping quiet in fear of your retribution.  
You had a few ideas on how to make things right again. None of them seemed plausible.


	6. Chapter 6

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] unblocked tentacleTherapist [TT] at 17: 03–-

TT: Spill.  
TT: Are you about to tell me just why you are so attracted to my brother?   
EB: hahahaha. no, no and, oh, no!  
EB: everything about your statement is soooo off.   
TT: Ah, that question mark now symbolizes a statement.  
TT: Regardless, you do know I only wish to assist you in your ventures?   
EB: omg la la la i don’t hear you and i sure don’t understand what you are referring to.   
TT: I suppose this is your cue to block me again as I will keep nagging you on the subject.   
EB: spot on, for once…   
TT: Oh I do believe I am almost absolutely consistently on the mark, or ‘spot on’ as you say.   
EB: why don’t you try being on the mark over there in the corner, by yourself.   
TT: I will, only to humor you, but not for long.

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] blocked tentacleTherapist [TT] at 17:12–-

 

You did not like the sound of this. You haven’t liked much about Rose recently, and this was one of your softer ‘conversations’. She simply did not know how to drop a subject. You had an idea of what was going on here. She saw your feelings as pure hearted ones, she encouraged them, when… When that wasn’t it at all. You lusted over the sounds that came out of his mouth, but not _him_. It was nothing like that, it was just a default in the system, it’s not really as if you wanted to get together with your best friend. That would be weird on so many levels, all of them probably.

You close the laptop and put it down gently on the surface of the coffee table. Dragging your computer around just doesn’t sound all that great anymore. Between feeling horrible for trying to keep Dave’s mouth shut at all times, Jade being ridiculously suspicious of your motivations and Rose basically _knowing_ your motivations, there aren’t many people you want to talk to. It’s at times like these that you wish you could still speak to kids from a different universe, people who could approach your problems differently, because it’s not the sort of problem they would encounter themselves.

Your heart gives a lurch and you blink rapidly, not knowing if you’ll slip into some nostalgic, close to depressive, state. You lean your head backwards onto the couch, staring up at the ceiling, trying to associate this time of the day to a brighter state of mind. It wasn’t dark yet, you didn’t get to mope around yet.

That’s when it catches your attention. There is something odd about the light, not the natural one, but the one projected by the lamp to your left, an obstruction so it would seem. You crawl up to the spot, too lazy to get up, glancing right and left, a bit suspicious that this may turn out to be a prank on Dave’s part. But the feeling passes with the assurance that you simply cannot be out pranked.

You reach out your hand gingerly, now seeing the piece of paper peeking out from the top of the lamp’s shade. You hiss and swear when you unstick the note, your fingers close to burning on the high temperature the piece of paper had risen to. You rub your fingers over the surface of the note angrily, your eyebrows lowering at the light bulb shaped post-it. This was incredibly stupid.

“Dumb ass,” you force out through gritted teeth, thinking of how the note could have caught on fire. That would have been even stupider. You simply could not understand what had gone through his head. How long had he even left it there for you? He knew of all things that his notes weren't things you often found. Literally, that thing could have caught on fire.

Exasperatedly, you glance down at his scrawled writing.

lets have dinner together tonight

-TG

You blinked owlishly, still glancing around you in fear of a prank. He wasn’t looking in your direction at all. He was in the small kitchen space, seemingly staring intensely at the stove. Maybe he was cooking, you can’t tell anymore, he used to hum while cooking, both activities he accomplished terribly, he didn’t hum anymore. Maybe he was cooking so you could have dinner together.

That is extremely unlikely. You have no idea when this note had been written down. It could have been days ago for all that matters. There is an unsettling lapse of time in which you wonder if he had perhaps cooked every day until you would finally sit down with him. It’s not like you were at fault! Breakfast was pretty much the most important meal in your household, apart from that food wasn’t much more than snacking. Plus, that note system, it had never truly worked.

You felt guilty nonetheless. For more than just that. Maybe you’ve been thinking too much about that censorship thing, maybe you truly are scared that Dave is unwilling to express himself in front of you. Maybe you still want to set the records straight, shove your weird attractions aside and spend some true quality time with your roommate.

“Want to have dinner together tonight?” You call out, twisting yourself in your seat, in hopes that he would twist around to answer you, maybe smile, maybe put aside your worries that he was tiptoeing around you with the false belief that you had a problem with his voice. Well, that wasn’t really false, but it was a misinterpretation.

“Yeah,” he replies stoically, not even moving from his spot.

You see his right ear twitch slightly though, and you know it’s under the ephemeral lifespan of his lopsided grin. And you wish the single syllable hadn’t awoken some form of longing in you, but it very much had; you understood that that would be one fucking long dinner tonight, but you went with it anyway. Because you were starting to feel just a bit too isolated, and whatever it was you were feeling for him was just slightly getting out of hand.

As a matter of fact, you succeed at making it very much longer than it should have been, instead of stalling around, because really there isn’t much left to do with the way you have been pushing everyone away, you spend the whole day in the kitchen with him. Over complicating simple recipes, making lame jokes, elbowing him out of the way with eager laughter. You prepare supper together and for the most part, he is still as quiet as the dead.

By the time you are sitting down around the kitchen’s isle, slouching on the plastic stools, you have a hard time swallowing down your food. He doesn’t; he is eating evenly, his lips still tightly sealed, expression blank, nestled away under the cover of the old shades. Your impact on his attitude might be a bit more exponential than expected.

“Hey, I,” you attempt to bring up the subject, but you fail spectacularly.

Still the shining hero, he is able to find the meaning in your words and to reply curtly.

“Chill, it’s fine.”

The fork you had been bravely holding clatters back down to the plate, and you quickly cover your face with your hands. You did want this conversation, one where you cleared up that he could be just as loud as he wanted to be. But only those few breathed words, their proximity, affected you in ways you wish they couldn't.

“Why is this happening,” you struggle with your words, with your position, with your inability to even take a bite out of your joined efforts.

“No really, John, I am used to it, being quiet, you know, kind of my thing back at home too.”

You decide that hiding your face isn’t exactly the wisest of decisions. You don’t want to limit your intake of information to hearing alone, that could quickly turn to catastrophic, as it already seems to be doing. So you peek out of your fingers, taking in his usual somber and cold appearance. However, you could see where this was heading, to things that were close to his heart, and for some reason, this gets your blood pumping even faster.

“You don’t need to censor yourself,” before you have time to add anything else, you are biting down on your knuckles, flinching with the lower register of your voice.

You had used Jade’s words, because she seemed to get Dave well enough, so why not. Also, also your mind is becoming foggier by the second, there is no place for you to come up with your own words anymore. That just isn’t a thing that’s happening anymore.

“Some people have a harder time hearing what other people have to say,” he shrugs in a disgruntled way, you can’t bother to investigate if he is talking more of you or more of his brother.

You hiss through your teeth, because it’s hard to counter his words and to defend yourself when your jeans are getting to be too uncomfortable. It’s hard to be honest with someone when you are unreasonably attracted to them and to stupid things like the way they speak.

“Let’s not pull that shit. Who has sat and read through every single one of your bad raps, that’s what I thought, me,” you grumble, not coming off nearly as angry as you want to be, only as weak and tired.

It was true enough, you’d skim through countless of pesterlogs, trying not to zone out over his rhymes, prevailing at most times. Your attention wasn’t so easy to seize, but you like to think you’ve always given him a chance to speak up, you’ve always at least attempted to catch the serious notes of your conversations. This one seems particularly serious, even though you are absolutely certain the two of you won’t be on the same page any time soon.

“Someone speaking holds a different impact,” he says it almost shallowly, as he keeps eating, his actions not speaking of how frazzled he may be on the interior.

“You say the same bullshit in real life,” you laugh and argue lamentably.

The lights have suddenly gotten very dark in your eyes, if there was anything more provocative than having Dave’s voice nearby and seeing his lips move at the same time, it was to hear him discuss the merits of a voice. That was truly the cherry on top the horrible cake that is this ordeal.

“The voice of someone, I guess at some levels, it’s a pretty personal thing,” he seems to chew his words as he keeps his pace of eating. His plate is half empty, yours is still full.  
The saliva had started pooling in your mouth once again, not a welcome change from the sudden dryness that had taken your throat. The alarms go off, this had reached the grounds of painful. Yes, to you, it was pretty fucking personal, considering it was the thing you liked to satisfy yourself to. Well not _like_ , as it didn’t seem to be much of a choice. You try picking up your fork again, the metal is impossibly cool on your overheated skin. This could turn ugly even quicker than you expected it to.

“Not really,” you are stumbling over your words, your tongue wiping at your teeth, trying to rid yourself of the sensory overload.

You blink the excess water out of your eyes as you hear the clang of his fork, his appearance helps you keep a leveled mind. It was Dave. It wasn’t just some insanely sexy voice, it was also your best friend, the one ready to practically chop himself to pieces for your wellbeing. And now he looked suspicious. Perhaps not as suspicious as he did concerned, but it still wasn’t a welcomed change. His arms crossed, frown set in place and heavy eyebrows heightened significantly. He was trying to read you. You slump forward more so.

“Some people just aren’t as willing to connect with other people, not that big of a deal,” he speaks gently, as if not to frighten you.

If only he knew he had the complete adverse effect.

“That doesn’t sound like me at all,” because it doesn’t, but you wish it did, you wish you had some humble reasoning.

“Oh yeah? Because I heard I wasn’t the only one you weren’t speaking to recently.”

The words cut through, sparkle, die in the same breath. They are sharp, they are final, they aren’t something you can refute. They are revelatory mostly. This was the problem with having the same best friends as him, word got around. Yes you’d been avoiding your female friends and yes, somehow, he knew of that. Not only that, he also believes you haven’t been speaking to him. It had not been the way you perceived it. He was pretty much the pivot of your world as of recently, the most present person to be completely honest. The feeling clearly was not so mutual.

“Why don’t you tell me the reason your brother doesn’t want to connect with you?

Cheap shot, deviating the subject. Also, not a smart move, not at all. It dawns to you now, as your hand slips under the counter’s top and towards your crotch that maybe you particularly lusted after him when his voice held vestiges of emotion. Hadn’t it been that way from the very beginning? When he’d first called you when you had been much younger and he had been scared and lonely.

“Nah, it’s not like that,” he breathes deeply in hesitation and your own breath stutters at the sight, “He just has a detached character, you know that.”

You probably should have nodded, or given him a sign that yes you were indeed still listening, but instead, your eyes had slid shut, and your teeth had been too busy digging into your lower lip to let you utter any words at all. Maybe you just needed more exposure to Dave all the time, because this staying away from him had just blown up right into your face.

“Egbert?”

You attempt to block it out, because having him say your name at this moment, when you are trying to touch yourself just to limit the damage if this flies off the handle, is just not the best venue. It becomes the worst venue as you ignore him and he asks a second, fatal question.

“Are you getting off?” The question lands, with no note of teasing or irony, just solidly present.

_’No!’ ‘No.’ ‘No, of course not.’ ‘What?’ ‘What do you even mean?’ ‘No.’ ‘No, are you?’ ‘No!!!’_

Instead, you say “ _Yes_.”

Unexplainably so, and this time, your eyes pop open, and your teeth let go as you go slack jawed, automatically, without your consent. At some point, he had picked back up his fork, actually intent on finishing your cooking collaboration, but now his fork only hovers a few inches away from his mouth, his eyebrows still quirked impossibly high.

Well, there was basically no way for you to save your face here.

He makes a few attempts at speaking up before opting for a route, he asks you, “To the food?”

As if, yes, that could be the terrible fetish that you’ve been hiding preciously. So, this could do, this could be the best case scenario. You try to nod your head, to say yes. You want to say, ‘ _Yeah, I am jacking off to this delicious plate of food_.’

Instead, you reply with ‘ _No_.’

He clears his throat, and you try to laugh, but you’re still palming yourself through your jeans, eyes alit with a fire you wish did not burn within you, you’re not really ready to laugh this one off. You have failed all social tests, Rose should have accused you of antisocial personality disorder, not him.

Dave reaches out to touch your forehead, and you flinch back, even though the overheated quality of your skin could really have sold him on his obvious new hypothesis that you are very, very, very sick. Somehow, having the one that got you going touch you when you’re already far gone isn’t exactly the flawless plan, so you don’t let it happen, and he in return also flinches back. He was used to you cutting conversations short, not to you putting up physical barriers as well.

“We probably just need to get you out of this apartment, you stay locked in way too much.”

His voice has regained a steady quality, and you try to hold on to it, try to let it straighten out your mood as well. But then, you catch the faint redness of his cheeks, and for the first time ever, you find him attractive for something else than for the air whooshing past his lips.

“Uh,” and with that single sound, you’ve commented on just how awkward and flustered you are currently feeling, he is quick to take pity of you, to help you out, though you are the one acting completely out of line.

“Don’t worry, your sex drive is probably just kicking in and shitting all over the place, you’ll get used to it?”

At least he has the decency to sound uncertain. Clearly, it’s not as if your libido is kicking in at the age of nineteen. Maybe he thinks there is some sort of malfunction or defect with it instead. You already think it’s the case, there is something terribly off about your sexual desires, but he doesn’t exactly need to know that.

“Would you get me a glass of water?” You ask in a small voice, your cheeks definitely redder than his.

And as your eyes trace his movements back to the fridge, something frozen and uncomfortable sinks itself into your chest. There you were embarrassing yourself, and he was still doing whatever you asked him to. That’s not exactly the new feeling however, it’s this whisper of your conscience telling you that maybe Rose had been right, maybe you’d misread your feelings.

At this point, you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it out alive, one thing is sure, your friendship won’t.


	7. Chapter 7

A while ago, you, your friends, and your guardians, had had the chance to play a game in which you could rise above as heroes.  And you’d watched as they had all ascended to the level of heroism.  You were supposedly a hero as well, hero of time, the  _Knight_ of time.  But that’s not true, not really.  You know you’d always been more on the damage control squad, you were always just there to cover up everyone else’s mistakes and to align things probably.  Not a hero, never a hero.

But you’d been pushed down with that title of _time_ and so your role is transcending, you feel as if it should, so, here, in these past years, you’ve tried to keep up on the damage control.  Whenever your help proved to be unnecessary, you’d feel uneasy, as if you were missing the one most crucial piece of the puzzle.

Your brother had been just fine.  Completely fine.  If anything, he was the one trying to watch out for you at home.  And it was infuriating to some point, he was the prince and--  he’d gotten to play the hero from the very beginning, unlike you.  Then you had tried to extend your help out to your friends.  It was comfortable at best, and at some point, you knew you needed to stay with someone who needed that damage control, not your brother, the one ever in control of his emotions.

John had been the obvious choice from the very beginning.  Rose just didn’t need your assistance, she’d always test the limits herself, go to the very edge, fall, and pull herself back together, she had a destructive mentality, and the best you could hope for was to simply stay away.  Jade didn’t need you either, of all of you, she must have been the one who had learned most about herself while playing, she was alright in solitude, she knew herself enough to never face damage.  John…

Well, in your eyes, John remained the most heroic one, even when you’d clashed with Dirk’s session and it became evident that your brother just always had all of his shit together, John was still the first one to rush to the frontline.  He was the least aware one, always a step away from death.  And if your biggest task in the game was to keep the Heir alive, it was a mission you had no problem translating to your current life.

Of course, there were all those other factors that convinced you to move in with him.  First, he had been the one to ask you, second, he was your best friend, third, _it sounded like a dream come true_.  So you rushed into it, just like he would always rush into danger, and you were stomached by the revelation that maybe you had been correct, maybe he wasn’t faring so well without you to survey damage.

At first glance, nothing was off.  Then, the more time you got to accustom yourself with the arrangement, the more details would pour in.  The way his breath would hitch when you asked him a question, the way he averted his gaze when you called him by his name, the way he started tapping his finger when you got more than a single word in… 

Then, self-consciousness had reared its ugly head.  You were _bothering_ him.  But even then you could tell that wasn’t the entire truth.  You knew how he would perk up when you entered the room, you knew he was quick to feel the loneliness kick in.  He loved your presence very much.  So of course, you did become slightly wary of your voice, he didn’t like it, that much was true.  And there weren’t many ways for you to tell if it was your voice alone, or all voices together, or people trying to communicate with him in general…  But, you left lots of notes around, knowing he’d find it in him to notice them whenever loneliness was an unwelcome visitor.  You had to spoon-feed the communication, but that could do, it was your job after all, it was the damage control.

These sorts of issues shouldn’t have come up as a surprise.  The subject might have been hinted over the years.  Yeah, yeah you’d notice how thick his voice would become whenever you held conversations with him over the phone, his attitude was downright bizarre.  But it had been implied one million times that silence wasn’t what he was most comfortable with.  You would know, it was exactly the same for you.  The quieter the apartment became, the more you could hear the distorted chime that had always accompanied your time travelling.

Whenever this happens, you have to find ways to snap yourself back into consciousness, sink your teeth into your arm, bang your head against the wall, squeeze your upper arm, _inflict pain on yourself_.  Time travelling wasn’t the  great honor other players might have seen it as.  It was downright terrifying, having to kick back into autopilot and needing to blend into the fabric of time, letting the subconscious handle the loops.  A few hours into it and you forget how to feel alive.  Weeks of it as you had done and you were on the brink of insanity.

Things of the past of course, but that buzzed back to life with every silence that settled over the apartment.

You tried your best to keep busy, and mostly, mostly it worked terrifically.  It wasn’t particularly difficult as John also had the habit of locking himself into his bedroom.  You left it as it is, apart from the padding around it, and careful surveillance.  John deserved the biggest break out of all of you, but you were having such a hard time getting in.  He was damn unreachable, and with every passing day, you felt the weight of your uselessness slowly press down onto your shoulders.

However, after a few months together, he is spectacularly merging with the quality of ‘absolutely weird’.  And here again you must highlight his need for some company, people weren’t meant to be alone, no matter how Rose and Jade chose to live their lives, in the long run, those sorts of things didn’t work out.  The way your best friend’s hormones were jumping around was proof enough.  _Really_ , having to watch him basically beat his meat to a plate of fucking food was the first straw.  You still aren’t sure what to make of it?  Possibly, the act of sharing supper with someone was overwhelming to that point.  And therein you could find the whole problem with barricading yourself. 

Not really, actually, you don’t have much of an opinion on this, but he is making your job extremely difficult by making you extremely uncomfortable.  So, recently, you haven’t been doing much of this damage control thing.  You’ve been thinking about shit, but honestly, you are pretty much steering clear from John.  Rose too, and her cryptic messages.  But, as previously mentioned, you don’t regard solitude so fondly…

If anything, that chime that the silence brings…  You hadn’t ever liked it.  In the game, there would be the three distinct notes that your shades would give out whenever Terezi would contact you, and you would just talk and talk, to forget that you were running around that place mostly by yourself.  So you are trying to hold on to the small conversations you can have with Jade, but even that is very meager. 

Truth be told, if moving in with your best friend had ever been a plan to get closer to him, or even if it hadn’t been, you just miss him terribly.

Why do you keep trying to drive him away from your living quarters then?  _Because he is acting so weirdly.  
_ Also, also he has a problem with your voice.  He doesn’t like your voice.  And, as much as you are protecting your feelings by keeping him away from it, you are also doing it to give him a break.  That sure doesn’t mean you wouldn’t rather have him around.  Your heart is selfish, but you are levelheaded, so you push him away, because you know he needs air more than anything else.

So, when you’d roamed around the place and frowned to yourself in the emptiness you had imposed by sending John out for grocery shopping, and had seen his music player, simply sitting out in the open, you’d felt the veritable need to get closer.  It was rare, unlikely, practically unseen for John to go around without music ready at hand, and at first that had just been another cool thing about John; he was just as passionate about music as you are.  Except for the fact that he is completely unwilling to discuss music, or to let you anywhere near his beat down iPod.

You were infamous for keeping up with trends, ironic or not, and so you possessed all of the topnotch models of music player, and John’s just wasn’t it.  You’d suspected he had simply gotten it for the color, like some kid, transfixed by the familiar sky blue.  To your greatest shame, you not only find this endearing, but also find yourself agreeing with him, you wouldn’t picture him listening to music on anything else...  So you’d helped him traffic the memory storage years ago as his love for music grew just as steadily as yours.  And now, as you fidget near the coffee table where you’d found it, it’s finally in your own hands, white ear buds dangling temptingly. 

Unsurprisingly, you find your way in the device’s collection as if it were your own.  Giddiness wells up inside you at the recognition that there was someone you definitely knew just as well as you knew yourself, even if things had become jumbled up recently.  In the same train of thought, you aimed for his playlists, because John was the sort of guy who matched up his socks in his drawers in attempts to mismatch them, and also the sort of guy who would better appreciate a thing like music if he could prepare combinations. 

Most of them are quite expected.  One with countless of titles, all consisting of lengthy piano concertos.  Strangely labeled ‘ _crystals_ ’, though with that thought in mind, the high notes played by various pianos eerily bring up the image of shattering crystals.  One that was basically a compilation of lame movie soundtracks, embarrassingly un-ironically named with the single word of ‘ _awesome_ ’.  There is a surprising one labeled ‘ _home_ ’ and as you try to make the link of the retro sounding songs to the edgier ones, you puzzle lyrics together and are struck that he has made a playlist of songs reminding him of his father.  Your breath catches as you remember how much more thankful you have been of your brother since you’ve come back from the game.

So it’s with a slightly more reserved, and more nervous attitude that you keep scrolling through, your emotions already set on fire as you half slump onto the couch.  The titles of the playlists catch your attention, help your lips curve into a genuine smile…  Sometimes it was just so hard to forget how much of a heartfelt guy your best friend truly is.  So with that notion firmly implanted, you forget all of his recent strangeness, and laugh at his compilations, really laugh, reassured that you are alone and that he won’t flip his shit at the sound of your laughter.  But amidst the comical names, there is one, simply titled ‘ _x_ ’.  Every time you scrolled past it you assumed it must be a defect, a mistake when naming it, or an empty playlist or…

But when you’ve strained all other outcomes, and have comfortably seated yourself, one arm draped over the back of the couch, and head leaning back into the cushion as you angle the iPod above you, it doesn’t seem like _such_ a bad idea to explore it as well.  You’re only happy when you successfully access the compilation of songs and have not unleashed some great wiping virus over the system.  The music is…  _Pleasant_.  If not, a bit lacking on a common theme.  And as you browse through them you start thinking maybe John had just set it up as a place to put all of his favorite songs.  After all, all of them seemed powerful enough, on the vocal levels anyway.

Mutely, you mouth along the words, while searching his music player for any compromising information elsewhere, but are sadly disappointed as the only files seeming to exist are of an audio nature.  You hadn’t heard John come back home, not over the roar of the music. 

Even if your ears hadn’t picked up on it until it was too late, you had no choice but to _feel_ it, and that alone should have convinced you to keep your lips sealed.  Unfortunately, a bland shout of ‘Ah!’ does escape your mouth, though it sounds more sarcastic than it does anything else.  It was the same small shout you would let out when Cal showed up at frightening places back at your brother’s home, over time it had shed itself of any emotion, but it remained, to you anyway, your cry of surprise.  And surprised you were when John Egbert _jumped_ you.

The sound is somewhat muffled with the mouthful of carpet you receive once your balance has completely been rocked off the couch.  He had apparently leapt over the back of the couch, and leapt to the contraption you had safely held in your hands.  It’s a mess, the grocery bag he had been holding up went flying, you hear some sort of jar that it had contained crack as the earphones slip out of your ears, you feel his nails clawing at your form, you have no idea what is going on…

“John,” somehow you manage to make it sound frustrated, trying to heave yourself off the floor, still a bit breath taken with his full weight pressing down on you.

“Give it back,” he whines out, pushing your face back into the floor in one swift movement, stretching to reach the iPod, the one you still held in your hand, and as your left arm had braced your fall, your right arm is completely outstretched, keeping the item out of his hands.

“You’re insane,” you choke out in the most inexpressive way you can muster as you successfully roll underneath him, arm returning to your form as you defiantly stare up at him, difficult task as your shades had gone askew and he could probably get an eyeful of crimson glares.

Glares that die off, along with your resolve, as you take his appearance in.

He’d clearly gone directly for you.  He was still clad with his winter parka, large fur-lined hood and all, his boots dirtying the floor next to your knees, leather gloves still on as his hands traveled quickly to your own.  He had you pinned down, straddling you as he heaved heavy breaths, eyes red from the cold outside and the combined rush of emotions, and expression dangerously close to anger.

“Hey Egbert,” any fight that had inhibited you dissipated quickly, and suddenly there was a need to fix your glasses, even though his eyes were very much more preoccupied with retrieving his personal belonging.

“What are you listening to?” He seemingly wants to pry it out of you, but instead, he successfully obtains the information himself, pulling the music player out of your hands, clicking rapidly to find out just where you had ventured to.

His face is scary, his weight seems to increase as his eyes bug out.  You’d nearly forgotten how off he had been acting, but now it hits you with full force.  You can’t possibly know what is going on in his head, so instead you try to reassure him with empty words you know will amount to nothing.

“They were pretty good songs, I mean, there is nothing to be embarrassed about?”

His eyes make a shift that seems almost feral to you, you are in full view now, and you want to cower away, or to at least push him out and set the black shades back in place.  You do no such thing, you gulp audibly as he realizes just what he is doing.  There is a second shift, a more global one, that affects not only his posture but seemingly his mental state as well.  He is looking down at you as if he is just understanding now that he has you pinned down.  The moments in which he tries to shuffle to his feet are gawky and even a bit gauche, but in a few heartbeats, he has made it back to his feet, a couple meters away from you, still breathing just as heavily, but face significantly much more flushed.

“That is—  That’s violation of private property.  Just.  Dave!” 

You haven’t moved, but your fingers have reached upwards to readjust your sunglasses.  So really, you were on the floor, completely ruffled, one leg still kicked over the couch, and completely behind the events that had just occurred.

“It’s a fucking—“

You are not given a single chance to complete that, or to keep going with your suddenly very sullen and grieving tone of voice.

“It’s my stuff and you don’t get to touch it!” It looks to you as if he has gone off the deep end, his voice reaches new heights with its pitch and your heart finds new places to hide in.

“Sorry?” Your voice sounds weak and pathetic, even to you.  And for a second you think it has counted for something, you think he will switch back, act like the asshole he is, but not completely out of line, with a joking smile and laugh, not with a serious and heavy façade as he is currently sporting.  It really only aggravates the situation.

“I—“

That is the only thing he successfully lets out before taking a good look at you; you who had been trying very hard to get back up after being knocked down so brutally, and he storms off, and in an odd sort of wobbly way, slamming the door to his bedroom for good measure.

The jar of pickles had broken near the coffee table, the bag of groceries stayed on the floor, thoroughly destroyed and forgotten.

You couldn’t say you were still happy with this arrangement.  Besides the levels of weirdness, John seemed to find a lot of new ways to make you feel like shit.  You wonder what it is about you that truly bothers him, you wish you could fix it, instead you start writing him apology notes that you will leave across the apartment, he probably won’t find a single one of them.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The next time the two of you cross you snicker out a greeting of “Good morning sunshine!” and he smirks at you as you both laugh it off.

Then it’s all forgotten. Even if similar incidents take place afterwards.

But it’s not really forgotten at all, because to you it all seems so forced and everything has just changed so much. It wasn’t something you could explain to him, there were so many things you just couldn’t begin to explain to him, because in the end, you just weren’t ready to jeopardize your friendship by giving out more information than required to. In the end all of your weirdness could simply be explained by the fact that he could get you hot and bothered with a single note of his voice and really, just not one of the things you particularly ever wanted to discuss with him.

It had seemed manageable at some point, even if it had been tedious and torturous, but in that one time, it had all shattered to the ground. There was just something about Dave sitting down, listening to the music that reminded you of him and that got you going every night before falling to sleep. Then there had also been something about having him underneath you, eyes almost completely revealed and soul too it had seemed. But mostly, it was the voice, and how it had conveyed his confusion, his pain, his misunderstanding… Though it was all very much negative, every emotion you could guess in his voice woke something in you, something very large and very ready to consume your entire being.

After that, it was hard to ignore how much you wanted him helpless and underneath you again, even if he almost never dared to open his mouth around you. This just wasn’t something you should be enjoying, because it was unhealthy in every single way. You relationship was fast-forwarding to a state of extreme fragility, but you couldn’t seem to care as the constant buzz to claim him for yourself grew louder and louder.

The problem still was that you didn’t want him to yourself, not really. You just had this unexplainable affinity with his voice, that was all it was.  
That was all it could ever be, and _that_ you had known for a long time already.

You haven’t been up for long, but yesterday, there had been another accident. In which Dave Strider made too much noise with his mouth and you had slammed your door in hopes to slide out of the slimy feeling that covered your skin. He’d called someone afterwards, anyone that was willing to listen to him, still blissfully unaware that the walls were basically insignificant, and then you’d gotten off to his voice, ritually so. And this morning, you’d woken up with the vilest taste in your mouth, and the nastiest gloom lingering in the air you breathed.

Sitting down in the same spot Dave had when you’d practically stuffed his face into the flooring, you’ve decided to acknowledge how tired of all of this you have become. Whatever it was, you weren’t so sure you still wanted to play, vividly, you understood that you can’t keep up things as they have been. So, you had done nothing but brush your teeth this morning, before glancing at the couch, still clad in your pajamas, and deciding to sit down. Afterwards, you had not gotten back up, because the tiredness had assaulted you.

You want to pass it off as nothing, that you had picked up the laptop from the coffee table and logged onto pesterchum, you want to say that you hadn’t been planning to go confess to Rose, but really, you knew that to be a lie.

 

\-- ectoBiologist [EB] unblocked tentacleTherapist [TT] at 09:42–-

TT: Oh I have been impatiently waiting for your return.  
TT: Almost for weeks, might I add.  
EB: rose, please just, can you tone it down a little today?  
EB: just this one time, that would be so appreciated.  
TT: Tone down my helpfulness that is?  
EB: no, more like your awful wordiness and your incessant need to over evaluate everything i will say.  
TT: I can’t claim to ever do such things, but I will furnish an extra effort to avoid such behavior.  
EB: somehow, i am in no way reassured.  
EB: but i guess this is as good as it will get.  
TT: You would guess right.  
TT: Now I shall offer my own guesses and bet that you have come back on your knees to hand out the information I have been urging you to give me?  
EB: it would seem to be that yeah.  
EB: i guess : /  
TT: I am certain admitting to anything won’t be anywhere as painful as you think it might be.  
EB: well then here it goes.  
EB: can you just…  
EB: do not tell dave this, alright? at least not for now…  
TT: you can speak to me in all confidentiality if that is your wish.  
EB: i think i probably…  
EB: i need to move out.  
EB: i just can’t stay here anymore.  
TT: Oh.  
EB: … yeah?  
EB: way to leave a bro hanging rose : /  
TT: Your claim wasn’t fully what I had been expecting in all honesty.  
EB: yeah um, i think i would probably feel terrible about it. but i just really don’t think i can stay.  
TT: Might I entice you into telling me what it is that has weighed into this decision?  
EB: man, idk.  
EB: i am a little fed up and a whole lot tired.  
EB: can’t keep it up anymore.  
TT: I must also urge you into thinking of the consequences of such actions. I have always viewed your cohabitation with Dave as one that has been inevitable and perhaps even necessary.  
TT: Though the female members of our group have proved to be taken with voyaging… I feel much more at ease with the idea of you by Dave’s side and not the one of you remaining sedentary and alone.  
TT: It would be nowhere near wise as you are probably still subduing the effects of our adventures.  
EB: maybe i can just travel with one of you instead.  
EB: please?  
TT: And what leads you to believe I like the idea of Dave remaining sedentary and lonely?  
EB: well i can go travel with you and dave can go with jade?  
EB: that would be so perfect! it’s like karkat’s shipping chart has actually transformed into a living chart instead!  
TT: I dearly hope this is one of your pranks John, because the ideas you are harboring are so childish it has almost reached the point of hilarity.  
TT: Actually, it has passed the point of hilarity and has now returned to the point of laughably sad.  
EB: wow thanks!!!!!!!!  
EB: you know i am just so glad i looked past the initial thought that you would make me feel worse and found it in myself to see you as great help.  
EB: because yeah this is helping me so much.  
TT: I had never taken you as one inclined to sarcasm!  
EB: obviously this living arrangement has changed me for the worst!  
EB: rose.  
EB: i’m serious i can’t stay here. help.  
TT: I am assuming this has to do with the attraction you feel towards my brother.  
TT: If I am correct, which I most certainly am, then I must insist that you are being a dumbass and a coward. We can work through this together, there is no reason for your overreaction.  
EB: it’s not like that.  
TT: The time for your denial has seriously passed John. In all honesty it wasn’t all too hard to spot your boner.  
EB: ugh, rose!  
EB: rose i am not attracted to dave.  
TT: Then explain!  
EB: it’s his voice ok?  
EB: i’m attracted to his voice.

 

And then there are tons of things you want to add, all the details about his voice, the way that if you closed your eyes just so, you could maybe make out and guess that he was from Texas. The way the tip of his tongue moved too slowly when he spoke, so you could make out the wet movement of it as it slurred his words only slightly together. The way he didn’t gesture when he would speak, but his fingers moved just so by his sides, hinting that he might be more willing to use his hands to speak than he let off to. The recent ways he would clack his teeth together to keep the words from tumbling out. Also, other moments that were a little more obvious and gave you away very quickly. Like the fact that he will sometimes fall asleep on the couch, the very one you are sitting on, while watching a movie and will make little sounds in the back of his throat while he sleeps.  
You want to tell Rose more. You want to speak about your heart and how it likes to inflate your entire chest whenever you hear him humming. You want to talk about the entirety of the situation. And you would have, you like to believe you really would have, if not for your resolve, then because Rose was simply good at just poking you and finding the way to push you into letting out torrents of information.

You say nothing. In fact, you almost don’t type in the last period of your confession and almost never make it to ‘enter’… Actually, as you typed the very words speaking of his voice, his voice rose up quite simply, some feet away from you, in front of you, thankfully on the other side of the coffee table, still at a safe distance.

“Yo, John.”

And already, you know nothing good will come out of this exchange, because everything about him in that moment seems strained, he, unlike you, is properly dressed, and giving away the fact that he had not gone to bed at all last night. Last night, when you had jerked off to the laughter coming from his room.

“Hey,” you smile with the greeting, despite the awareness that in your case, you are most likely just as strained or probably more so.

He nods his head only slightly, seemingly unreadable as you can’t guess the movement of his eyes.

“Who were you talking to?”

It’s obviously not the topic he wants to broach, yet you feel as it made you as nervous as the touchiest subject could.

“Oh! No one, I wasn’t talking to anyone,” you make a big show out of this phrase as you note the sweat rolling down your back.

You shut your laptop for dramatic impact, simultaneously thankful and angry for its presence. Thankful to cover our lap and thinking that you most definitely always need something as such when speaking to him, but also really bothered by the warmth pooling at said lap from the laptop.

“Good. Then could we talk instead?”

And he fucking walks around the coffee table and into your personal sphere. You try to lean away, but there is just no space, also, you don’t really want to. If anything you want to reach out to him, pat his hair, tell him it will be alright, because bottom line was, he was your best friend, and obviously he wasn’t feeling too good, and it had gotten to the point where it simply could not be just joked off.

Instead, you remained seated, your air supply becoming a rare thing, and cheeks gradually heating up to the most contained blush you could muster. Also, your heart broke, your heart broke at the hope he obviously held, in spite of the great fear of subjecting himself to whatever you had to say. He didn’t even need to say anything, you already knew what he wanted to ask. Nonetheless, he did voice it, and it just made it all that much harder.

“Alright, so you’re going to tell me what the fuck you dislike about my voice,” he announced, though the confidence seemed slippery despite the wording.

To put it lightly, he was fucking terrified of you.  
To make matter worse, you were fucking terrified of him.

“Am I?” You asked throatily, jumping a little as those were the words that escaped you. You hadn’t picked them, not at all, and you flinched back as you awaited the consequences.

“Yeah. ‘Cause I used to think otherwise, but this is getting to be a bit too hard for me,” he shrugged as if the words meant nothing, but his voice was laced with those negative emotions again.

You could think of other things that were getting to be a bit too hard for yourself. You still tried to scurry back, clutching at the computer and blinking furiously, trying to dim down any giveaways to your piqued arousal.

“I don’t know what could have given you that impression—“

“Don’t play dumb with me,” his words weren’t louder, but they were sharper, cutting through you just that easily, leaving no place for debate.

Not a tone of voice you had ever heard from him, especially not directed towards you. It was always ‘ _go along with whatever Egbert is doing_ ’, you weren’t so sure what the emotion that welled up in you could be called. It definitely hurt, quite a bit, but all of the other feelings you had on lockdown grew as well.

How long would he keep up the charade from the game? How long could he run after you as you did whatever you pleased and picked up the pieces? Probably up until you started making him feel like the shittiest person on Earth, which was as of late.

“You’re just being self-conscious…?”

“Am I?” He mocked your previous reply easily, a smirk of cruelty drawing itself upon his lips, “Because I’m pretty sure it’s either you hate my voice or you hate me as a whole.”

“We’re best friends,” you claimed breathlessly, under the impression that he was too blinded to remember such a thing at the moment.

“Best friends are _honest_ with each other.”

And you shut your eyes, because, _wow_ is he talking a lot. But when he speaks again, his voice is closer, and you can tell he is no longer shifting from one foot to the other, standing awkwardly in front of you, instead, he breathes literally into your ear.

“ _Tell me_.”

The sound that escapes your lips is positively atrocious. You had not been expecting this, such a forward tactic, a way to prove that there truly was a problem. It seems to egg him on, and you manage to open your eyes to catch a glimpse of him as he climbs atop of you, hands clawed deeply into the backside of the couch, and knees firmly planted onto the cushion.  
You lunge backwards, holding the laptop more tightly.

“Stop, I’m holding technology,” you claim lamely, though your hands would really rather busy themselves with pushing him away instead of securing said computer.  
It takes the bat of an eyelash for him to remove the laptop from you all together and to frown deeper. The perfect moment for you to give your very best attempt to push him away.

“Would you just tell me?” His nose brushes the shell of your ear, and you are lost, your attempts to push him off are futile, instead your hands seem to want to pull him forward, to get his voice to be even closer.

The only reassurance was that he knew nothing of that. Not until his knee met violently with your crotch, as he kept up his efforts to get his voice to rile you up into giving him an answer. He pauses at this, as do you, even your breathing has stopped.

“ _Oh_.”

You bite down on your bottom lip in the hope of not moaning at the atrociously revelatory quality of his voice, and how close it remained. Instead you whine out the plea “I can explain!”

“Oh I don’t think you need to.”

You think he has pulled back to look at you, but you can’t tell, no, because your eyes have slid shut again, you can’t face this, you don’t have the energy to hold up any sort of composure.

“What really was going on here is that you _liked_ my voice.”

You feel the smile bleed through his words, the relief it brought to him. But the emotions holding you up were quite the opposite.

“No,” but it’s obvious it’s not a no towards what he had said, but towards what was going on in general.

“You should’ve told me Egbert,” this time it’s a ghost on your lips, he has leaned down on you just so, his lips aligned to yours, his words breathed directly onto them.  
Your eyelids reveal your eyes for the tiniest instant and you can catch sight of his smug, yet enormously relieved grin. Then it all blacks out and there is no longer place for words between the two of you. There is that same feeling to his lips as they move against yours, urgent, yet bittersweet with the long awaited liberation of the thought that you _hate him_.

You want to push him away, your hands are stationed perfectly to do so, yet what they manage to do is claw at his shoulders, pull him towards you, deepen the kiss, let his tongue slide in between your lips, let yours tangle with his, let them separate only for moments of bated breaths. Then there is a sound in the back of his throat, and the pent up frustration of years hits you with an iron red force. Your hands are tugging at his hair now, and your hips are rocking upwards, urging him to settle down on you instead of keeping up his predatory stance.

He seems to get the idea, and when he breathes a sensual “John” directly into your open and waiting mouth, you can’t help but to thrash your head to the side, eyes still shut, air escaping you in great deep huffs. He trails his lips downwards, and hums against your jugular vein, and _damn it_ you have never felt this alive. When the lower part of his anatomy finally meets yours, you choke in all the air you can, and try not to let your mind short-circuit as his hips grind into yours.

“D-Dave, no,” the force leaves your words as all of it is used into pushing him off, your knee jerks upwards, trying to kick him away, your hands now tugging his head violently away.

“What?” He doesn’t seem bothered, he licks his swollen lips sensually, his posture relaxed, as it hadn’t been in weeks. And for the first time in forever, it counts more than the sensuality dripping from his vocal cords. It hurts a lot more.

“It’s the voice, not you,” you almost mouth the words, unable to make a sound, your heart screaming ‘ _No, no why_!’ as it plummets to a certain death.

The return of the strain seems to strike him as lightning would, but remains as a stronghold, the sharp upturn of his lips is lost, though he had not yet put the distance between you, you felt it, heaps of salt in your not yet healing wounds.

“Okay, yeah… Okay.”

You shut your eyes again, you can’t identify which door he has shut. Your head falls backwards, you laugh at yourself for crying and are more than certain you are now definitely not staying in this place.

TT: His voice? That does indeed strike me as a bit odd.   
TT: Might I venture on more details?   
TT: John?   
TT: Though I am appalled by the rudeness of your wordless departure, I must add more words of wisdom, if I may do so.   
TT: You are not ‘attracted to Dave Strider’s voice’.   
TT: That is ridiculous.   
TT: His voice enables you to assert your true sentiments; that is something entirely different.   
TT: Oh John… Please don’t do anything stupid.


	9. Chapter 9

“I cooked you something,” you enunciate loudly and clearly, as if this could change the impact the gesture you did daily would have. Of course, it wouldn’t.

You shuffled your feet, frowning deeply at the bland, white door. You could probably just reach out, turn the knob… You don’t, you hold the platter up and keep shuffling. He had that annoying habit of hiding food in odd places, just as he did hide notes in random places. You suspect it is because the places which are supposed to hold food had never done so back home with his brother. He never really did get used to living with you, neither did you.

“It’s probably not very good,” you laugh at yourself, pretending there was absolutely nothing wrong.

Your forehead bonks against the door. Yeah, you hadn’t even had a sliver of hope that today would work any better. Sliding to your feet, you placed the platter neatly on the ground. You would come back hours later, and it would still be full, and you’d sob dryly, maybe once or twice, get over it, and pretend everything was alright until you made another attempt to reach out.

“You know you can’t stay in there forever,” you whisper mutely against the door, a hand touching it gingerly, as if this would help you tune into his wavelengths.

You get back up, voice shedding itself of its uncertainty as you face the door voluntarily.

“You can’t be angry with me forever.”

But of course, you know he can. Then again, you don’t even know if he’s angry with you. Actually, it had taken you over a whole day to even realize he had locked himself up there. There had been absolutely no confrontation. Only this overbearing, heavy silence. He probably uses the bathroom whenever you fall asleep or leave the apartment, and so, you are positive you could use your pranking soul to trick him into a confrontation. But that is just a bit too heartless. Besides, your energy hasn’t been anywhere near pranking recently. Your energy has escaped if truth be told.

“You can’t ignore me forever,” you settle with, blinking at the door, imagining one thousand scenarios.

Most of them involved him not hearing you at all. Headphones on, or something similar… You hadn’t really heard him throughout this whole thing, your life if you’re being fair, you hadn’t given him the chance to express himself, or at the very least, he hadn’t taken that chance. It was bitter retribution if he was no longer listening to you.

“Well I’ll just be in my room,” you smile, imagining him in front of you instead, nodding curtly.

But he isn’t. And your smile hurts more than it does anything else. Your hand shakes as you bring it to swipe it at your eyes. You hadn’t worn your glasses in a while, there wasn’t much to look at here. Your other hand grips at the cloth of your pants, steadying yourself as best as you can. It hits you how lonely the scene is, how pathetic you are, staring at the shut door, waiting for someone who wouldn’t come. You swallow down the hurt, the feeling blooms into nostalgia. All of the instants you had been bordering helplessness during the game… _Hopelessness_. Waiting for someone who wouldn’t come, waiting for something that wouldn’t occur, waiting for a world that could never be yours.

You’re still waiting for someone who wouldn’t come after all this time, and you don’t understand why it feels so _identical_.

“I’m sorry,” you add as an afterthought.

And though you do feel as if you miss him, it’s not really the dominating thing here. You are more taken with… With the way you’d definitely hurt him. You just wanted to make things right. You didn’t understand his point of view, you hadn’t asked his opinion, he hadn’t given it. Now you were _dying_ for it.

You returned to your room, as you had said, and you heaved a sigh of pain, you went directly for the wall that connected to Dave’s room, gently pressing your ear against it. No noise. But you could feel his breathing, one of the many gifts, or curses, air had bestowed to you. You are thankful for that at least. You are thankful you aren’t bleeding yourself to death wondering if he had also encountered death. No, he was safe, and breathing and—

Ignoring you. And you don’t know what else. Ignoring you. And it was entirely your fault. Ignoring you.

You sit at your desk, your eyes still fixated above your computer, onto your shared wall. It’s no use. You retrieve your glasses, boot up pesterchum, hope for a flare of red. He hasn’t signed in, he hasn’t signed in since… Well, since he’s locked himself in. Though the girls have given you every single impression that he had in fact communicated with them. Maybe he had simply blocked you. Maybe your friendship really was done and over.

Maybe you need to move on, give him some air… Maybe you really don’t know what to do with yourself and are extremely unsure if you have completely messed this up or not.  
Something great rears its head in your black shriveled heart as a window pops up on your screen, when your eyes meet with apple green instead of cheery red, you are only slightly deflated. Maybe this was good, speaking to someone, even if it wasn’t the someone you were waiting for.

 

\-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 20:43 –-

GG: john i am so glad i could catch you!!!  
GG: come out of hiding johnny boy :)  
EB: omg jade…  
GG: there you are you big poopy face! :D  
EB: gosh… who told you i was upset?  
GG: uuuuhm… :(  
GG: john its ok we don’t need to talk about it.  
EB: ugh there shouldn’t be anything to talk about!  
EB: why jade, why do you even know about anything.  
EB: kill me.  
GG: booo!!!  
GG: john we are your FRIENDS  
GG: friends know about stuff and they help!  
GG: friends dont like seeing other friends sad  
GG: :(  
EB: yeah i am working on it…  
EB: just what do you know exactly?  
EB: man this sucks…  
GG: well  
GG: like  
GG: everything, yknow? :)  
EB: i honestly doubt that.  
EB: even rose shouldn’t know everything.  
GG: well see the problem with rose is that she isnt a people pleaser…  
GG: but I am!!!!!  
GG: ((on my good days))  
GG: so I get intake from all of the sides  
GG: ALL OF THEM  
GG: and i get to knit words together back into stories  
GG: unlike rose who just knits with needles :P  
EB: lovely.  
EB: still very doubtful over here.  
GG: ‘sokay… yknow i would really like to make up for that time when i didnt help you by helping out now  
GG: would that be ok???!??  
EB: uhhh i don’t even know what you are talking about.  
EB: but if you really think you know what is going on, might as well…  
EB: but you probably don’t.  
GG: i do!!!!!  
GG: ill prove it >:(  
EB: go ahead  
EB: bedazzle me harley!  
GG: hihihi youre silly  
GG: ok ready to be mindblown captain???  
EB: as i will ever be.  
GG: there once was a boy  
GG: ((thats you!!!))  
GG: who asked a girl  
GG: ((thats meeee!!!))  
EB: this story already has so many subtleties, a real work of art.  
GG: ((shut uuuup))  
GG: the boy asked the girl for help  
GG: but the girl was extremely foolish  
GG: she thought that if she could be harsh enough she could spook the problem out of him  
GG: or something  
EB: terrifically efficient move…  
GG: shhhhhh  
GG: but she did not help the boy find sleep not even a little  
EB: oh ok.  
EB: i don’t like where this is going anymore.  
EB: we can stop thanks. :(  
GG: i think not mister!!! >:(  
GG: we are getting to the end of this tonight or so help me karkat!!!  
EB: hehehe good one…  
GG: thanks :)  
GG: ANYWAY  
GG: the thing was that she should have probably helped him as he had come to her in the way a small boy would go to her sister  
GG: because it just turned out they were kind of siblings ;)  
EB: ;)  
GG: but when she didnt he went to someone else entirely different  
GG: he went to another boy he held closely to his heart  
EB: HOW do you even know this?!  
GG: hihihihi :)  
GG: but this boy he did not hold in affections like a sibling  
GG: not even a little  
GG: and the second boy gave him advice unlike the foolish girl  
GG: because he loved the boy very dearly  
EB: yeah, you’re pretty much making me feel like shit :/  
GG: ok just hold up :(  
GG: so the windy boy took the advice  
GG: and he was actually overjoyed that the time boy helped him  
GG: he was really happy  
EB: i guess i was…  
GG: and so when he got around to trying the time boys trick  
GG: he was really overcome with how much he liked the boy  
GG: but that likeness manifested itself in that trick  
GG: and since he was the boy who spoke to wind  
GG: the other boys voice whispered to him on how much they supposedly liked each other  
EB: hahahahaha you are so off now. that so isn’t how it happened.  
GG: isnt up for discussion!!! >:(  
GG: and so the feeling persisted  
GG: but windy boy could not tell the difference  
GG: he could not tell what was really going on  
EB: jade stop stop stop.  
EB: ok you are so wrong.  
EB: you want the truth?  
GG: yeah and i can definitely handle the truth!!!  
GG: ((i am sidestepping your terrible movie references))  
EB: ok.  
EB: well puberty kicked in.  
EB: egbert has a fucked up sexuality.  
EB: big fucking surprising, anyone would after all the trauma.  
EB: and tragically voice fetishism.  
EB: and then even more tragically, his best bro’s voice.  
EB: then bullshit for the rest of his life.  
GG: see but thats not really all there is to it!!!! D:  
EB: actually it is.  
GG: then why are you feeling so terrible for rejecting him?! huuuuh?!???  
EB: first of all; i didn’t reject him, ok, there was nothing to reject.  
EB: second: HE IS MY BEST BRO.  
GG: eeeeh youve got it so twisted john!  
EB: i’m telling you it was puberty!!!!!!!!  
GG: hum well ok lets go with that  
GG: then let me ask you a question  
GG: what was it like when you first heard daves voice?  
EB: i jerked off that’s what i’m trying to tell you!  
GG: omg john ew no!!!!! D:  
GG: i meant in the game  
GG: and not davesprite  
GG: because the sprites had stupid omnipotent voices  
GG: i mean  
GG: the first time you ever heard dave  
EB: yeah?  
GG: well how did you feel?!!! :D

You twist your face into a grimace, glance up to the ceiling to blink away the blankness and bright colors of the screen. You’d become so absorbed in the conversation, your typing surely had sounded like thunder. But even if that had been the case, it is more than likely that Dave was still doing something that would keep him from hearing a word from outside of his world. You didn’t think about in game moments, you tried your best not to.

Not that you were pretending it hadn’t happened. There was nothing you could do about _that_ , it had happened and it was fundamentally important. But there was no use lingering over it. You could look into things, you could over analyze, you could probably find the meaning of life, the meaning of everything, through sheer details of the game. You don’t want to, none of you do, you keep it in a drawer and you keep the key in your pocket just in case. And as the analogy prickles your skin with its realism, you look behind your shoulder, to your bedside table, to the drawer in which you kept flimsy plastic stars, and you are taken with the invigorating urge to pull them out.

What had it felt like? When you first heard Dave? Do you even remember?

Of course you do, you just need to unlock that part of that memory…

You look at the white wall, imagine Dave on the other side, feel as if you are looking down flights and flights of stairs as you acknowledge just how far back you two went. Just how long ago and just how you had pulled him through and how he had especially pulled _you_ through and that after all this time; yes you remembered every single moment.

You smile sadly at your monitor, happy that Jade had respected your silence and hadn’t pestered you into a quicker response. You ready your fingers, not entirely sure you are willing to share this, but at this point… At this point, you don’t really want to keep things to yourself. They feel noxious in your hold, you don’t want to keep them in close, you want to send them out to the universe, rid yourself of the blackness that had drenched your heart.

EB: it felt as if we’d won the game.  
EB: it was the first time i really believed we were going to win.  
GG: ahaaaa!!!  
GG: now those are some pretty serious feelings if you ask me :P  
EB: yeah they were.  
GG: soooooo…?????!? ;)  
EB: you tell me.  
GG: so john stupid you are in love with him!  
GG: and you have been acting like a mess for noooo reason  
GG: stupid stupid dumb  
GG: you love him so much  
EB: i guess i kind of do.  
GG: omg has the egbert really outgrown the denial?!?  
EB: don’t take offense to this, but i guess i can admit he has been my favorite person for a while now.  
EB: i would never doubt him or try to hurt him… but i guess i managed to do that second thing huh?  
GG: misunderstandings happen!! D:  
EB: idk why but…  
EB: it never made sense for me to hold romantic interest towards him.  
GG: sure it does!!!  
EB: well i still don’t know if that’s true, but i will admit that it doesn’t really matter.  
EB: wow this is so weird.  
EB: gosh jade this is soooo weird!!!!!!!!  
GG: hehehehe! :)  
GG: dont you think its kind of great!? ;)  
EB: i think i messed this one up so…  
GG: well you were being stupid stupid dumb  
GG: and maybe a bit hurtful :(  
GG: but now you are soooo over that!!! right?  
GG: so just go for it!!!  
EB: ugh idk jade sorry :(  
EB: thinking about it kind of already hurts.  
GG: ok what about this  
GG: i get that you are a young strapping lad :P  
EB: gosh don’t pull out the grandpa talk!  
GG: :PPPPP  
GG: ANYWAY i get that you are a boy  
GG: and that dave is a boy  
GG: and that omg so many testosterones and sexual tension  
EB: yeah i am leaving now.  
GG: all im saying!!!!!!!  
GG: next time he speaks try to look past the sexual layer  
EB: you’re killing me i hope you know this.  
GG: and look for the feeling you had before you were a boy who couldn’t sleep  
GG: look for that invincible feeling  
GG: and maybe it will stop hurting  
EB: jade…  
EB: great advice, best sister.  
GG: yeah it was a long time coming :)

 

The conversation slowly dwindles down to nothingness, you wouldn’t admit it out loud, but you hadn’t really wanted it to end. It did do you enormous good to speak to someone, no matter if it was through walls of colorful text. Not to mention, for all the things you had said, you didn’t exactly want to ‘go get the boy’. But… Maybe she was on to something. Maybe you could try that. It was just so horrifyingly scary. Also…

Also nothing had changed at all. You had just looked at yourself with a purer state of mind, you had looked at yourself from the outside and gone, ‘ _Ah so this is what they call being in love_.’ But aside from that nothing had changed at all, you had just come to your senses.

And sleep wasn’t coming. Sleep wasn’t coming, and you could touch yourself all you wanted, there weren’t any steamy pictures coming to mind, only heartfelt ones. Soft touches and glances and smiles and all of the things Dave would do with delicateness. And instead of the fire that essentially rendered you helpless, the fire that would run through your veins and spoil your blood, instead you found yourself taken over by some sort of lethargic energy. One that demanded you to just march to Dave’s bedroom, present your arms to him and pick him up. But that was inexcusably stupid.

So you took out the Glow-in-the-Dark Stars out of your drawer and shoved them into your hoodie’s pockets, and you roamed around the apartment, with one star in hand, lighting up dark corners of the place. You found a lot of notes and you realized they were actually pretty easy to find. If only you bothered to look. _If only you made an effort_.

And similarly, Dave was very far from being a vixen in your mind, all you saw was that Dave who would scribble down words and who would wait patiently for you to find them and read them. Tonight, you find a dozen, at least, and every time you find one, you replace it by one tiny glowing star.

You find one, on a normal yellow post-it, inside the highest cabinet of the kitchen, one that always remained empty because you needed to climb up the counter to reach it, which you are currently doing. And his writing is eerily neat.

youre acting really weird it would be pretty cool if you could just find this give me a sign that were still friends its really getting weird

It’s not signed by the usual ‘-TG’ it doesn’t need to be.

You pick back up the full platter of food in front of his bedroom’s door.  
You place a star in the highest cabinet, you slide another one underneath his door.  
You stay seated in front of the door. You hear his footsteps eventually, a pause, steps moving away. He had picked up the star, your last one. You sighed heavily.


	10. Chapter 10

When you woke up this morning; you couldn’t make out his breathing, not from anywhere in the apartment.  _He must have gone out_ was your initial thought.  And maybe you feel slightly better, because that is a definite improvement.  Hours later, when the sun is lazily basking the rooms of the apartment with an ethereal glow, you still can’t make out his breathing from anywhere.  You start worrying. You start worrying that maybe this isn’t an improvement at all, maybe, just maybe, he’s just left for good.  Packed up his things and left just as wordlessly as you had pushed him to be.

You turned his doorknob to check if his bedroom was empty or not, because the torture was too much.  Asking yourself if he was gone was just too important and not something you were even capable of doing.  So you decided to let the answer fall onto you instead of even posing the question in the first place.  When you open his door, at first you think you’ve committed a great mistake, then the fright you had been feeling blows out of proportions and everything that had ever mattered to you suddenly ceased to exist.

Putting a foot into his bedroom wasn’t really an omission in mutual respect, though you’d had many of those in these past weeks, no, his things were basically yours as well, that much had been established.  Though he showed great distaste for anyone else rummaging through his things, you’d always escaped such a treatment, you were always welcomed in his room, no matter what he was up to.  It wasn’t such a balanced friendship after all…  No, you hadn’t kept away from his room because those were his things and you respected his possessions and privacy, you’d stayed away because he did not want to see you. The privacy he held towards you did not materialize itself but was quite simply the emotions he could eventually come to display.  The ones he definitely had when he’d all but walked out on you almost a week ago.  There was nothing you could find in his room that could possibly bother him.  However, if you were to walk into his space, things might go slightly ugly.

So when you catch sight of him, laid on his back over his bed covers, hands crossed over his stomach and shades over his chest, as if they had been removed in an afterthought; you almost smash the door back into your face.  That’s when you feel that you have truly outdone yourself.  You’d managed to fuck up, _again_ , no matter how much you thought this whole thing was unsalvageable, you’d gone and made it even worse.  Before the door collides with your generically surprised face, your arm is propelling the door forward with a surprising force, hinges protesting with the violent swing and your feet quickly leading you to his spot.

In these past days, you haven’t worried too much for his wellbeing, because you’d catch the rhythm of his breathing and could thus put aside all possible catastrophic scenarios.  This morning you couldn’t hear his breathing, you’d just assumed he had headed out.  He’s here though.

It’s a very frightening experience, to have your mind go completely blank.  Nothing would come up, no paths were available, no thought process was logical; just one droll, buzzing blank.  When you’d found your father’s corpse, your mind had slowed down with the weight of your childhood and nostalgia became much more becoming of you than grief had been.  Afterwards, every single corpse in the game meant little to nothing, even all of the ones Dave would leave around.  In the grand scheme of things, they were but pieces on the chessboard.  The Dave on this bed is no chess piece.  He’s Dave, the kid that would follow you around, the boy with the surprisingly rough voice and quite possibly the person who had carved out your heart a long time ago.

Of course, eventually, you are able to piece things together.  But before you do, there is this feeling of free fall, one you are familiar enough with.  You’d floated above Skaia long enough to sometimes plummet to the ground for fun, but this time, it’s not fun at all.  There is this insurmountable obstacle facing you as you turn towards the wrong conclusion.

His ribcage is moving though, inflating slowly and deflating even slower.  And with that, you sink to your knees, on the opposite side of the bed, forehead sinking into the mattress and willing yourself to choke back a distorted laugh.  It takes you three more seconds to understand why his breathing had gone from something you understood completely to something completely silent.  But your eyes snap back to him before you can affirm that much. 

Dave Strider is sleeping.  You hadn’t thought it possible before meeting him, but he had never slept outside of your own sleep schedule.  If anyone could truly rule over insomnia, it was him.  But now, he’s sleeping, and his breathing is utterly unnoticeable.  Though he’d crossed his hands, thus amplifying the imagery of the deceased, he was actually only holding on to something, the one star you’d slid underneath his door.  He was sleeping, dressed in his everyday clothes, the room giving off no indices that he had been planning to take a rest, and the star, the one you’d desperately wanted for him to have, safely tucked away in his hold.

Your neck gives out again and your still glasses bared face finds its way back into the covers, a single exclamation leaving your lips almost tunelessly “…  Shit.”

Shit, that had been all kinds of scary.  Now that you know things are sensibly alright, the scariness amplifies at a dangerous rate.  You, however, can’t find it in yourself to feel guilty at breaking the intimacy you didn’t want to trample…  The fright had been too great for you to hold on to such values.  And so instead of leaving the room and be content with the knowledge that he was simply resting, you climb up on the bed and bury your face into the unused pillow.  With the inhale your senses are submerged with the proximity.  Dave Strider, asleep.  You angle your head slightly to watch him.  His sunglasses shifted atop his solar plexus with every soundless breath and though most of him seemed to be taken with frequent tremors, his hands remained steady around the plastic star. 

“Dave,” you whisper with an alarmingly heavy breath. 

His nose twitches at that, but his light eyelashes remain rested onto his pale cheeks, mouth slightly agape to permit the silent breathing.  Your hand clutches at your heart automatically.  It’s the inner struggle of happiness, the pure joy to see him and to have him close again, and also the unlimited sorrow filled emotions at having kept space between the two you, at having shoved him aside so easily.

Your hand moves to reach out to him, but instead you end up covering your eyes and you find yourself rolling back into the discarded pillow, breath still at an embarrassing rate as his remained the absolute embodiment of even and airy. 

Having Dave near your element, air, breathing, humming, whistling, speaking; whichever, had always been exceptional to you, no matter if you had been conscious of it or not.  But as your fingers dig deeper into the pillow and your eyelids become increasingly heavier, you can’t make out this whoosh of wind.  Instead, you become aware of his scent, one that could only be described as _warm_ , though this use of adjective should be odd.  But then again, right now, most everything is warm to you.  The body so close to yours, his scent, his everything…  The feelings that were dragging you down were now impossibly warm and lulling. 

As far as the sensory side of things was concerned, you were quite overwhelmed.   But, for once, it wasn’t your auditory affinity that did the trick to push you into the domain of sleep.  It was the mere fact that it was Dave next to you, and oh boy did that mean the world to you. 

You’d fallen asleep under the morning’s sun.  It could have been that the great darkness of bedrooms scared you away from sleep and that was truly why you had been enveloped by warmth.  But you decide to be alright with the fact that you are able to sleep as long as Dave is concerned.  Not just longing after his voice, but being able to fill up your senses with who he was; that was enough to fight away the anxiety you felt at the role you had played in the game.  When you wake up, the sun is even higher up, it’s early afternoon.  You don’t even need a second to remember this morning’s events, you _know_ Dave is here, nearby, you know, naturally, and so you take a few seconds to bury your face even deeper into the warm pillow. 

Eventually, you note that his breathing has returned to normal.  _He is awake_.  But when you rise up, when you pull yourself up by putting all of your weight on your elbows, he hasn’t changed positions at all.  The star you had given him was in his hands, he was still lying as still as death.  But whereas his eyelids had melted into the balance of his face perfectly, they were clearly being clenched now.  He was doing his best to appear asleep.  He was giving you this chance to quickly escape.  This was his sign; yes you could use him to fall asleep, you always had, and if that’s all you want, that’s fine.

“Dave…” His name escapes you again as the dagger of such thoughts burns on your skin.

Trembling breaks through the hold of his hands; the rest is visibly unmoved by your own voice.  You watch though as the now lightless star moves slightly in his shakiness and you feel yourself deflate completely at the thought of him holding on to it to fall asleep.  The one thing you’d given him, the one time you’d turned back to him and gave him something that mattered to you.  You meant for it to be symbolic, on some level, maybe all of them.  In the game, you never thought of thanking him for backing you up.  And then in life, it had just been the same.  You wouldn’t have thought retribution, gratefulness, some sign from you would be appreciated; even less be anything like needed.  But you could sense that it mattered a lot after all.  It mattered a lot that you hadn’t been thankful.

“I’m sorry.”

And now you’re left with being apologetic. 

“I’m sorry I always just went ahead in Sburb.  I’m sorry I spent so much time waiting for someone when all I needed to do was to let you catch up.  I’m sorry you had just as hard of a time sleeping but I didn’t help.  I’m sorry I never help.  I’m sorry about the whole voice thing.  I’m sorry it took me this long to realize I love you too,” though you started out with a devastatingly haunting tone, you finished with sweetness, smile upturning your expression and pulling yourself up to your knees to observe Dave.

There’s only one second for you to react, only the red flash of his eyes before you are reminded to act, thankfully, you know him too well, and so you beat him.  You’d snatched the glasses off his chest before he had time to throw them back on his face, and he’s sitting up too before he even has time to frown at your victory, you were brandishing the shades away, too happy to be here to care for his glare.  Too happy at the possibility that maybe things could work out.

“Love you too?  What’s that supposed to mean?” He spits out, voice cracking and hesitant, as if his initial intent was to keep his vocal expressions on a lockdown. 

But you can deal with that, you can repress the rush, you can ignore the things that are building up inside of you at the show of his voice, because he is so close, he is so close and there are other things you can concentrate on than simply his voice and the emotions it held.

“As in you love me and I love you too,” you state calmly, while simultaneously feeling as if all calm has slipped into your cover and as if your insides are now left completely vulnerable.

His mouth falls open until finally he only leaves out a retort of detached sarcasm, “Uh huh…”  He’s quick to shut his eyes, if only to compensate for his lost cover, flopping back to his pillow and promptly turning away from you, “I think you need more sleep,” he practically drawls, and it becomes evident that he is trying his hardest to make his voice as unappealing as possible.

You smile at this, setting his shades aside and personally laughing at his resolve.  Clearly he couldn’t just switch to never speaking again, and so he’d decided to modify his voice, by the means he had.  It was utterly pointless, but also quite proved that your infatuation was deeply rooted in you, just as Jade had suggested.  You took a few moments to simply observe him, the way his back muscles tensed as he waited for your next move but also the way he openly left his back to you in the first place, in a complete motion of trust. 

Still acting on impulse, you stretch out next to him, arms circling around him rapidly and hands pressing to his stomach, where you feel the breath he had been keeping within him escape all at once.  “Dave,” you whine for too long, only too happy to be able to use his name again and thus overusing it just as easily.

“What the fuck!  Egbert get off!” He exclaims in a hurry, trying to pry your hands off of him, but at this you only pull him closer.  The struggle continues for a few seconds, until you playfully release him and he plummets to the ground. 

“That’s fine.  You take the bed I’ll take the floor,” he mumbles into the carpet, not making any move to get back up and probably taking the fall as the lovely escape from you that it was.

“Sheesh Dave,” and in your mind you add his name ten more times, overjoyed that you can finally see him for the person you love and not just your best friend, “We can sleep for the rest of our lives after, but we have to talk first!”

“We don’t have to do shit,” he deadpans, his voice surprisingly even further muffled.  The idea that he is speaking through his hand doesn’t even seem impossible at this point.  It, however, remains saddening, as you stare down at him and his obvious effort to ditch his voice for you.

You sit down at the edge of the bed, feet dangling near his form and face contorted into a serious expression as you try to mentally lift him off the ground, “I think we do,” you sigh and try to make yourself sound very important, but only come off as saddened, as you clearly have been for this last past week.

He lets out a long moan of exhaustion into the floor and your stomach twists itself into a new shape.  Pinning this down as your breaking point, you nudge him with your foot and turn him over.  You can settle down a little once he’s looking at you, sprawled out and eyes still bemused by the spell of sleep.  You can swallow down the vile taste of harboring dangerous thoughts about him, but all at once, your affection for him overwhelms you and you find yourself on the floor and over him as well. 

There’s a shining moment when you can read the panic in his eyes, and you can’t help but to ask yourself if you’d always be able to tell what he was thinking if he didn’t hide his eyes away, but before you delve deeper into it his arms have latched around you and you sense the trembling of his fingers.  He isn’t holding onto the star anymore, you can’t even tell where it wound up, but he’s holding onto you and that’s really the message you had tried to get across in the first place by the means to the piece of plastic.  The transition into kissing surprises even you. Somehow, it’s a lot better than the first time.  It’s a lot better, because you know you want it to be happening, and you’re completely at peace with that.  The uncontrolled trembling on your back worries you slightly though and finally you start noticing how his throat is closing up, how tense he’s become underneath you.

He doesn’t want to provoke you with his voice or some shit like that.  He doesn’t want to put you in a situation you don’t want to be in just because of his voice and how little he could do about it.  Such reflections strike you with their stupidity, even though you would have supported them just a week ago.  So you sit back on your knees slightly and don’t leave him the chance to scurry away when you pull away, putting down most of your weight on his diaphragm, thus helping him in the immobilization of his voice.  Your hands slip underneath his neck, his eyes slide shut now that yours are zoning in on him.  When your hands slide their way to the spot underneath his jawline, his breath erupts suddenly, his willingness to remain silent wavering as air flowed erratically up his larynx.  When your hands slide down his throat, you sense his gulp and the dulling of his shaking all at once.

It’s only when you get to his chest, after trailing over his collarbones and the protruding sternum you could feel through the material of his shirt, it’s when your hands are directly above his lungs that his breathing kicks back in intensely.  You feel his body arch underneath your hands, his eyes close tighter and his head being thrown backwards.  You get the feeling this is the initial reaction when a person gets reanimated.  You’ve done it, for the first time since you’ve gotten home, it feels like you did the windy thing.  You brought breath back to Dave all in one caring touch.

He however, is scrambling to get you off, protests of “John what do you think you’re doing?” pouring out of his mouth and frantic movements as his hands encircle your wrists and pull with uncontrolled force.  You let him do as he pleases, because you are already practically sitting on him and see no way for him to scurry completely away.  That and the rise and fall of his chest is incredibly attractive, maybe even more attractive than the shrieking his voice has been climbing to.

“Calm down,” you laugh, your voice slightly off as you cock your head at his suddenly wild behavior.

You only wince slightly as he lets the fight leak out of him and his head crashes back to the floor, his eyes are still exceptionally red but now also seem frightened.

You sigh, only once, before he speaks up instead of you, “What does this even mean?” he quirks his eyebrows and, you try not to notice this, but there is a slight glimmer of hope, only in the back of his eyes, but it’s still identifiable.

“It means, I think your voice is amazing,” you start out evenly, leaning back over him, lips almost brushing his as he tries, but fails to retreat, his breathing still incredibly profound, his chest almost rising off the ground with every inhale.  “But what I really need in my life is you.”

You wanted to kiss him at this point, because every romantic thought and conception you have ever harbored points to it.  But his panting is so heavy and his eyes are so wide, and you can’t help but to flinch a bit with the recollection, the false recollection, of his scream, the one that could be heard throughout your dreams.

“D’you think I could ever manage to make you scream?” You ask deafly, fully aware that this should come off as sensual in your given position, but it’s exactly as pathetic sounding as you feel.  His demeanor does not change at your question, if anything, it intensifies.

“It already has,” and this time, the broken quality of his voice does nothing for you.  You of course are about to jump at the possibility to ask him to clarify, but there is no such thing, he answers it with the same deaf and pathetic tone you had used, “First time I found a doomed John.  Lots of kicking and screaming and childishness.”

You smile sadly as the revelation hits you like a ton of bricks.  It’s quite clear now that the way you feel about Dave, is as mutual as possible. 

The first time he’d called you after the game, you remember, he’d mentioned finding your corpse as if it had been some important turning point, which of course it was.  He’s still trailing after you, because you're the one person he doesn’t want to see die.  He is also the one person you don't want to find dead.

You were aiming for his lips, true, but you only successfully collapse on top of him, arms pulling him into a hug and laughter almost brokenhearted as you sob out an “I love you,” that he returns in the deep, emotional voice he’s always possessed.

Insomnia had been an aftermath of the game, but it hadn’t been a result fabricated from the guilt of the tasks you had accomplished in it.  It was insomnia plagued with the thoughts that Dave wasn’t all that immortal.  What you’d needed had been a reminder that he was there.  The rest just followed suite because, to put it simply, he happens to be the one dearest person to your heart. 

You don’t think that from now own sleeplessness will be a problem, because he’ll most definitely always be near for when you are falling asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you thank you everyone who read it to the end! And bigger thank you to everyone who has given feedback!
> 
> Expect more davejohn from me in the future, sorry, I can't... STOOOOOP D':

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have much to say about this...!!!


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